OTTAWA — Independent senators now outnumber their colleagues affiliated with a political party after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau filled six vacancies in Quebec on Wednesday.

The new senators include a doctor, an environmental scientist and a mayor.

Newly appointed Sen. Eric Forest, currently mayor of Rimouski, Que., said Trudeau promised he and his colleagues would have “independence of thought.”

“Looking to the challenge of renewing the upper chamber, he said he was counting on me, that he was expecting an important contribution from me due to my experience at the municipal level and with the (outlying) regions,” Forest said.

The other senators include Rosa Galvez, a professor at Laval University originally from Peru, who has focused much of her research on pollution.

Marie-Francoise Megie is a longtime family physician and professor at Université de Montreal.

Renee Dupuis is an influential human rights and indigenous issues lawyer who won the Governor General’s Award in 2001 for her non-fiction book, Justice for Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples.

Also nominated is Marc Gold, a prominent member of the Jewish community and former professor, along with Raymonde Saint-Germain, Quebec’s current ombudswoman.

Trudeau’s announcement followed his appointment last week of six new senators from Ontario who, like their colleagues from Quebec, are also not affiliated with political parties.

The appointees were selected through a process that involved more than 2,700 applicants who were screened by an advisory board that came up with a short list for each seat.

There are now 44 Independent senators, 40 Conservatives and 21 others who still consider themselves Liberals despite being kicked out of the party’s caucus by Trudeau.

A group of independent senators have already asked for the same resources given to their party-affiliated colleagues, including reserved spaces on committees studying legislation.

Conservative Sen. Claude Carignan didn’t appear to be too warm to that idea.

“Normally, it’s the tradition to come up with (composition of committees) during the throne speech,” he said.

“It has always been like that. We agree there’s going to be a large number of independent senators who are coming in, so we will see how to make sure they fulfil their duties and they assure us they will also be present.”

Another Conservative senator, Bob Runciman, said the new independent senators are “really in-the-closet Liberals.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/prime-minister-justin-trudeau-appoints-six-new-senators-for-quebec/feed/0Officer pleads guilty over remarks following death of Indigenous artisthttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/officer-pleads-guilty-over-remarks-following-death-of-indigenous-artist/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/officer-pleads-guilty-over-remarks-following-death-of-indigenous-artist/#commentsTue, 01 Nov 2016 20:28:54 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=944725Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar had posted Facebook comments after the death of Annie Pootoogook

Ottawa Police Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar leaves his misconduct hearing for charges under the Police Services Act for racist comments posted to social media after Annie Pootoogook’s death, at the Ottawa Police station on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2016 in Ottawa. (Justin Tang/CP)

OTTAWA – An Ottawa police officer apologized to his family, the force and the Inuit community on Tuesday after pleading guilty to two Police Services Act charges in connection with online remarks he made about the death of indigenous artist Annie Pootoogook.

Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar — a 30-year veteran who was working as a forensic investigator at the time of the remarks — was charged with two counts of discreditable conduct under the act.

In September, Hrnchiar posted Facebook comments — described during Tuesday’s hearing as “racist” — suggesting Pootoogook’s death ought not to be linked to the phenomenon of missing and murdered indigenous women across Canada.

Pootoogook’s body was found in the Rideau River on Sept. 19 — a death that police did not originally treat as suspicious.

“This has nothing to do with missing or murdered aboriginal women,” Hrnchiar posted. “It’s not a murder case … could be a suicide, accidental, she got drunk and fell in the river and drowned, who knows?”

Hrnchiar, wearing a dark suit, stood and expressed his regret to a room packed with his family, friends and members of the media at the Ottawa police station.

“I’m truly sorry for my actions,” he said.

Tuesday’s proceedings were heard by retired York Region police deputy chief Terence Kelly, who is expected to deliver a sentence on Dec. 7.

Hrnchiar’s defence lawyers and Ottawa police jointly recommended a penalty of a three-month demotion to the rank of first-class constable and cultural sensitivity training.

The situation has been very difficult for Hrnchiar, said Ottawa Police Association president Matt Skof.

“He’s realized, all the way throughout, how troubling and damaging the comments have been,” Skof said following the hearing. “Chris has wanted to take responsibility for this. This has had a great impact on himself, his family and his colleagues and he’s recognized that.”

An agreed statement of facts presented Tuesday said Hrnchiar appreciates the embarrassment the comments caused the Ottawa police and that he displayed remorse for his actions.

It also noted he has engaged with the force’s diversity and race relations team to assist with a dialogue with members of the Inuit community.

“It’s frustrating, because obviously he wanted to make this known from the beginning,” Skof said. “As we have a Police Service Act process, he understands the limitations and legalities around making comments prior to today … he made a point of saying it today.”

Ottawa police Chief Charles Bordeleau previously called the comments inappropriate, saying they had racial undertones and didn’t reflect the values of the service.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/officer-pleads-guilty-over-remarks-following-death-of-indigenous-artist/feed/1Perry Bellegarde makes his pitch for a developed, respectful Canadahttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/perry-bellegarde-makes-his-pitch-for-a-developed-respectful-canada/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/perry-bellegarde-makes-his-pitch-for-a-developed-respectful-canada/#respondWed, 12 Oct 2016 23:23:40 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=936711The Assembly of First Nations National Chief told policymakers that Canada would do well to close the gap between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people

AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde speaks at a news conference in Ottawa on Friday, Feb. 27, 2015 following the National Roundtable on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (Adrian Wyld/CP)

Sitting in front of a crowded room of top policy-makers and corporate CEOs on Wednesday, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde brought a clear message: “Close the gap.”

Sandwiched somewhere between an interview with federal Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and a keynote speech by the federal government’s top economic adviser, Dominic Barton, Bellegarde acted as the Indigenous voice at the Public Policy Forum’s Growth Summit in downtown Ottawa.

In his interview, Bellegarde stressed the difference between quality of life for non-Indigenous people and Indigenous people—a population that’s young and growing. As Baby Boomers approach retirement age, Bellegarde touted the potential for Canada to tap into the “human capital” on and off reserve.

“As First Nations people, we want to see development, no question,” he said. But in doing that, the federal government, provincial governments, industry leaders and Indigenous peoples need to find common ground. “Before you try to build anything, build a respectful relationship with Indigenous peoples.”

These relationships could help address the grim socioeconomic reality Indigenous people face in Canada. In 2015, Canada ranked ninth in the world for quality of life, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. If you apply those same principles to Canada’s Indigenous community, Bellegarde said that ranking drops to 63rd. “This gap represents everything we talk about: it represents the 1,200 missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls; it represents the high youth suicide rate, the 132 boil-water advisories; it represents the cap on post-secondary funding, the disproportionate number of people in jails.”

The federal government set aside $8.4 billion over five years in this year’s budget to address some of those issues, but Bellegarde said they have yet to see any of that money, and impatience in communities across Canada is “starting to brew”—as is the impatience for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to act on all five promises he made at AFN’s general assembly last year. Those included an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 recommendations, removing the two per cent funding cap, reviewing federal laws, and making significant investments in Indigenous education.

Of that $8.4 billion, $2.6 billion will be invested in primary and secondary schooling on reserves. But half of Canada’s First Nations population lives off-reserve, and Bellegarde said change has to happen there as well, starting with the curriculum.

Education among First Nations youth is sorely behind. A report released in early 2016 by the C.D. Howe Institute found that only 40 per cent of First Nations aged 20 to 24 living on reserves finished high school, compared to 70 per cent off reserve. Ninety per cent of non-Aboriginal young adults have a high school diploma.

The numbers aren’t any better at the post-secondary level. According to Statistics Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey, less than 50 per cent of Indigenous people had post-secondary schooling—14 per cent of those had a trades certificate, 21 per cent had a college diploma, and 10 per cent had a university degree. For non-Indigenous Canadians, nearly two-thirds had a post-secondary education, with 26.5 per cent of those holding a university degree.

“We’re still here,” Bellegarde said. “But we don’t want to be in 63rd anymore. We’ve got to close this gap, which really is in the best interest of Canada.”

For the third time in less than two decades, Carleton University professors Stephen Azzi and Norman Hillmer have surveyed the best historical and political minds of our country to rank Canada’s 23 prime ministers on their effectiveness. Unlike in years past, this time, the duo created two lists: one cataloguing prime ministers in office for a short term (a list of 10), and another for those in office for a long term (a list of 13). They surveyed a record 123 experts, and added new questions about the prime ministers’ environmental and indigenous policies.

It led to some surprising results – one being that our current prime minister, who has been in office for less than a year, has already surpassed his predecessor on the list. Maclean’s sat down with Azzi and Hillmer to dig deeper into the survey’s key findings.

1. Making the top three

In survey after survey, experts have usually selected William Lyon Mackenzie King, Wilfred Laurier, and Sir John A. Macdonald as Canada’s top three prime ministers. Hillmer says this is because they all have something in common: they were in power for a long time, and in that time, achieved greatness.

2. Canada’s founding father is behind the times

While Macdonald made the cut among the older experts surveyed, he was bumped out of the top three by the younger cohort, replaced by Pierre Trudeau and Lester B. Pearson. Hillmer and Azzi both weighed in on why this is.

3. Justin Trudeau vs. Stephen Harper

Our new prime minister has barely been in the role a full calendar year, but already he has leapfrogged his predecessor when scored for effectiveness. Hillmer says we might just need to wait for the Trudeau honeymoon to end. His score may yet fall.

4. The “Harper period”

Just what makes our former prime minister so unpopular among experts? It could be political bias, or it could be the fact we haven’t had enough distance to judge him properly, according to Hillmer.

However, Azzi says with or without the left-leaning experts, Harper still tanked in the rankings.

5. So you want to be a good prime minister?

How does a prime minister climb these rankings? They have to do something, says Azzi, and make a mark. Charisma means nothing unless you stand for something important to Canadians.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/prime-minister-effective-justin-trudeau-stephen-harper/feed/0Architect Peter Clewes on the Château Laurier expansionhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/peter-clewes-the-architect-behind-the-chateau-laurier-expansion/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/peter-clewes-the-architect-behind-the-chateau-laurier-expansion/#commentsWed, 21 Sep 2016 18:14:03 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=926835On the visceral reaction to his Château Laurier reboot, the privilege of iconic buildings—and what he was trying to say

The owners of the iconic Fairmont Château Laurier in Ottawa—steps from Parliament Hill and a seat of unofficial power in the capital since it opened in 1912—recently unveiled plans for a huge expansion. Now a national historic site, the Château was the first Grand Trunk Railway hotel built by Charles Melville Hays in hopes of drawing tourists to his lines. But Hays never saw the hotel completed: he died in the sinking of the Titanic days before the scheduled opening.

The public reaction to the proposed expansion was largely, and loudly, negative: Ottawa mayor Jim Watson tweeted, “This falls under the category ‘back to the drawing board!’ ” The hotel’s owner, Larco Investments, will have to win over the city and the National Capital Commission for approvals before a single shovel meets the ground. But for Peter Clewes, with Toronto-based architectsAlliance, it’s been brutal to see the building design he coaxed into existence be excoriated.

Q: What was the context for this project that your design is responding to?

A: This is an extraordinary site. It’s under the purview of the National Capital Commission, so there’s a federal interest. It is arguably one of the most iconic hotel buildings in Canada, and it sits adjacent to a major public park and on the ceremonial drive in Ottawa, so it’s a very, very charged site and we’ve had to have tremendous regard for that. When we’re dealing with historic buildings, we don’t replicate, but we try to be subordinate and be deferential to them.

Q: How did the historical hotel building influence the look of the addition you designed?

A: The roof is a very steeply sculpted mansard roof that is probably the most iconic part of the hotel because it reads on the skyline; we tried to stay below that. The hotel is constructed of limestone and it has deeply incised windows, as was the style of the day, and it has a sense of solidity and timelessness. We’ve chosen to reinterpret that using limestone as a cladding material and doing very deeply incised windows, but in a much more contemporary manner, which is a series of vertical windows in a somewhat whimsical pattern—some have likened it to a bar code. What we’re trying to say is, look, the hotel is the most important building here, and we were simply trying to respond to that. [The addition] is physically separate from the hotel, and it’s linked with glazing, so there’s a very clear distinction between what is old and what is new. I think one of the positive outcomes of this redevelopment is to re-expose the ballroom windows on the north façade of the hotel, which were blocked by the parking structure. We’re proposing a courtyard in the centre of the addition that will allow those ballroom windows to be re-exposed.

Q: When you’re working with an iconic historic building like this, is it more of a blessing or a curse?

A: I think the best way to describe it is: it’s a privilege. Architects, I think we understand the privilege and how charged the site is, and we’re deliberately trying not to be arrogant in our design approach. Now, some may disagree, but we’re not trying to create a building that stands out on its own as ‘Look at me! I’m something to be reflected upon.’ It’s more deferential. This building is a cultural marker of the city at a time in its history when it was developing itself as the nation’s capital, around the completion of the national railway. It really speaks to the hopes and dreams not only of Ottawa, but of the country at that time.

Q: If you try to recreate a historical style, does it end up looking like a Disney or Las Vegas version of itself?

A: That’s absolutely the problem. It confuses history. You don’t know where one ended and the other began. The hotel itself is interesting: its antecedents are in 16th-century France, but that was an adopted style from the Gothic period, which came out of religious architecture in the 14th century. So it was a reinterpreted Gothic style, but the French at the time thought, ‘Hey, we want something that speaks to the nobility and the status of our public buildings and important people.’ [The Château Laurier] is far more whimsical and it doesn’t take itself seriously, but it is also speaking to this idea of nobility and importance. But to do that now would be just absolutely not right.

Q: When one of your designs is presented publicly, like this one, what is that day like for you?

A: Of course there’s a lot of trepidation. You hope. I’m a passionate person, and I care deeply about the work we do. It’s very, very important to me that it’s well received. But I know—I’ve been doing this a long time—first reactions are often negative, and I’ve often thought that one of the issues is fear of change. I’m used to the visceral reaction, and it’s difficult, but I also think it’s important—it’s important to have this conversation. Because if we are to believe or accept that buildings are cultural markers, if architects work in a vacuum with their own preconceptions about society, then we won’t be creating appropriate cultural markers.

Q: What do you think it is here that people are responding negatively to?

A: I think there’s a common thread amongst a lot of people that what came before was better, and we were more comfortable in our roots, looking back rather than looking forward. The nostalgia that comes from that—I think it’s a deep-seated human condition: yesterday is always better than today and the fear of tomorrow. I don’t think there’s anything absolutely wrong with that, it’s just the way we are. So when people are presented with something new, there is a very visceral reaction.

Q: When you put it in those terms, anyone who designs for public consumption is unwittingly addressing really deep human things, if we’re talking about fear of change and our sense of nostalgia.

A: Any artist will tell you that when they get negative criticism of their work, it’s personally hurtful to them. The problem with architecture is it goes with the territory, because it’s an applied art and because you’re messing about with people and their environment. You have to expect that kind of commentary and reaction; it’s completely natural and reasonable. If I could change it, I would love to have a one-on-one with people, but of course that’s impossible. It is human nature that you don’t hear from people that like it. They just go, ‘Hey, that’s great,’ and move on.

Q: What’s the relationship between public and expert opinion? You designed this building and obviously think it has merit, so how does that fit with a negative reaction from people on the street?

A: Public commentary absolutely influences our work. We have to respond to budget concerns, we have to respond to functional and programmatic concerns of the building, and we have to respond to public engagement. That’s what you sign up for when you decide to become an architect. We’re keenly aware of how charged the project is. I’d also like [critics] to reflect on the cultural markers of any society and any city. It’s really important that we not replicate what came before us, but we do something of our own, that’s reflective of our own time, of contemporary society.

Q: In the time you’ve spent in the hotel, what did you learn about the building and what kind of relationship did you develop with it on a human scale?

A: It’s a very inward-looking building, very reflective of its time in hotel architecture and design. It’s like your house in the city as a visitor, so you come to the house and you don’t want to be exposed, you want to be very secure—it has very grand, but very private, public rooms on the ground floor. Also, it is extremely well-crafted. It has such extraordinary attention to detail in terms of the materials and how those materials are put together. It’s a timeless building. It was put up to stand the test of time, to be there in 500 years, and that’s partly what makes it so remarkable and partly why people have such a passion for it. There’s a sense of immortality that, of course, we don’t have in our lives.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/peter-clewes-the-architect-behind-the-chateau-laurier-expansion/feed/4Electoral reform consultations move into high gearhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/electoral-reform-consultations-move-into-high-gear/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/electoral-reform-consultations-move-into-high-gear/#commentsFri, 16 Sep 2016 12:24:28 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=925593But there's a problem: Polling concludes just three per cent of Canadians are engaged in the electoral reform debate.

]]>OTTAWA – Canadians may not agree on the kind of voting system they want but Maryam Monsef says they do agree on some common principles they want to see in any electoral reform.

The democratic institutions minister says her consultations thus far have revealed no consensus on the precise voting model that should replace Canada’s current first-past-the-post voting system.

That said, she’s also heard some “consistent messages.”

Canadians, Monsef said, want a system that is more inclusive of those who’ve historically been on the sidelines during elections.

They want election results to better reflect the way they vote.

And they want a specific MP to represent them and be accountable to them.

“What is really clear is that there is a select few who like to engage in the highly technical aspects of the different systems,” Monsef said in an interview.

“But we’re finding that people want to talk about these values that are so important to them.”

For the past two weeks, Monsef has been on a cross-country consultation tour that’s taken her to the northern territories, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. She’s held 15 townhalls so far with more to come as she heads east.

Her listening tour is in addition to the hundreds of townhalls that have been held over the summer by MPs from all parties.

MPs have until Oct. 14 to report back to the all-party committee exploring electoral reform options, which spent the summer hearing from experts and will hit the road next week on its own cross-country consultation tour. The committee is to issue its final report by Dec. 1.

Nathan Cullen, the NDP’s democratic reform critic, has attended 10 townhalls, including four in his own B.C. riding. He and other New Democrat MPs have been circulating questionnaires at all their townhalls, asking participants specific questions about the type of voting system they’d prefer.

In contrast to Monsef’s finding of no consensus, Cullen said the results of NDP townhalls so far show “overwhelming” support – in the range of 90 to 95 per cent – for some form of proportional representation (PR).

New Democrats have also found a positive response to the notion of making voting mandatory but real concern about online voting, which people fear could be hacked or manipulated, he said in an interview.

While general invitations have been issued to all the townhalls, Cullen acknowledged that those who’ve turned out tend to be those who are already strong advocates of PR.

And therein lies a problem for Monsef and the committee. An Ipsos Public Affairs polls last month concluded that an elite group of just three per cent of Canadians are engaged in the electoral reform debate.

That dismal number has bolstered the Conservatives’ demand for a referendum on any change to the voting system.

“If (Monsef) had twice as many or three times as many (townhalls) and the groups she was meeting with were 10 times as big, it still wouldn’t be adequate as a replacement for a referendum,” said Conservative democratic reform critic Scott Reid.

Only three Conservative MPs have held townhalls so far. Reid himself has no intention of holding one because he doesn’t want to validate what he considers an inadequate consultation process.

Monsef remains unconvinced that a referendum is the way to go, although she isn’t categorically ruling it out. She cites the cost and potential divisiveness of a national vote on the issue.

Cullen argues that referendum campaigns can distort issues, prey on fears of the unknown or even become proxy votes for some other issue entirely – like the government of the day. Referendums killed previous attempts to change the voting system in three provinces – Ontario, B.C. and Prince Edward Island.

The NDP is proposing a compromise: a sunset clause written into the legislation setting up a new voting system. The clause would specify that after giving the new system a trial run in one or two federal elections, a referendum must be held to determine if Canadians want to keep it. If a referendum was not held, the country would automatically revert to first-past-the-post.

But whether a majority on the committee, where each party has its own partisan interests to protect, will be able to agree on a new voting model remains an open question.

“How do you reach consensus on a file like this? First, recognizing that no one group is going to be able to get everything they want on every aspect of any reform,” said Monsef.

“Second, by not allowing the pursuit of perfect, which does not exist, to get in the way of what is possible.”

After leaving for addiction treatment two months ago, former Liberal MP and fisheries minister Hunter Tootoo is headed back to the Hill. This time as an Independent. Tootoo resigned from his cabinet post and from the Liberal caucus abruptly at the end of May, citing “addiction issues.” On Wednesday, the 52-year-old sat down with his Nunavut constituents at an open house in Iqaluit. For the record, here are the remarks prepared for his opening address.

Good morning and thank you. It is really terrific to be back home and enjoy the comfort of our great territory.

I want to take this opportunity to say thank you for joining me here today. I am extremely grateful for the patience you have granted me during my healing.

Many people reached out to me and offered their support. To the many Nunavummiut, Canadians, and Members of the House of Commons and Aboriginal leaders, I sincerely thank you.

You believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. Those words of encouragement made all the difference in my recovery.

My family has been especially supportive of me. I want to thank my kids Eden, Taya, Cedric and Oceane for their undeniable love for me as their father, and I want to thank my brother, my mother and father for being here for me.

For me, this has been a very difficult journey. There are some deeply personal and private issues that have haunted me.

Unfortunately, alcohol is often a coping mechanism for trauma, and that trauma is far too common in our (Inuit/Indigenous) communities. I have personally been affected by those impacts.

The decision to step away was my own. I needed to devote all my energy into getting healthy. I’m committed to continuing my treatment with AA meetings.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/for-the-record-hunter-tootoo-on-returning-to-parliament/feed/1Muslim group demands open probe into Ottawa man’s deathhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/muslim-group-demands-open-investigation-into-death-of-ottawa-man/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/muslim-group-demands-open-investigation-into-death-of-ottawa-man/#commentsTue, 26 Jul 2016 14:19:02 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=904899The National Council of Canadian Muslims says an investigation must look into whether racism played a role

OTTAWA — A Canadian Muslim advocacy group is calling for a thorough and transparent investigation into the death of an Ottawa man who was involved in a confrontation with police.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims says an investigation must explore whether racism played a role in the death of 37-year-old Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali-Canadian.

Abdi had a confrontation with Ottawa police officers Sunday and was later rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead, a family spokesman said.

The council’s executive director Ihsaan Gardee says a swift and open investigation must take place in order to ensure trust is rebuilt between police and the Muslim community.

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit is probing Abdi’s death. The SIU investigates whenever there is a death, serious injury or allegation of sexual assault involving police in the province.

“Many members of the Ottawa Muslim and Somali communities have serious concerns about how this tragic incident unfolded, including whether prejudice had something to do with Mr. Abdi’s treatment,” Gardee said.

“The protection and preservation of human rights and dignity, regardless of skin colour, religious belief, or any other characteristic, are integral to our collective and individual sense of safety and inclusion.”

Matt Skof, president of the Ottawa Police Association, said it would be “inappropriate” to blame what happened on race.

“That it is an inappropriate conversation to be having in the context of this call,” Skof said Tuesday.

“In a situation like this, race is simply a fact to the case. I mean, this is no different than gender or height,” said Skof, adding that police were responding to an assault-related call from the public as required.

Abdourahman Kahin, who leads a group called Muslim Presence, said it is too early to assume the police were racially motivated.

He said members of the Somali community in Ottawa would be gathering for a private meeting Tuesday evening to discuss how to respond to the issue, and he will be urging everyone to avoid ethnicizing it.

“It would be more to answer emotionally, than rationally,” said Kahin, who used to live in the same building as the Abdi family and knows one of his brothers.

“We condemn the brutality of the police — 100 per cent condemn — but don’t put the colour of the victim (first),” he said Tuesday outside the building where Abdi lived.

“Before he was black he was a human being. He was a human being who was treated inhumanely.”

“We are well aware of the context within which we police,” Bordeleau said in a statement issued before Abdi died. “Our officers are professional and they are dedicated to protecting the community they serve.”

Ray Miron, 67, said he was watching television from his nearby apartment Sunday when he heard people screaming outside.

Miron said he watched police beat Abdi as he was lying on the ground. The incident has left him angry, he added.

“It just was not right for the beating that they gave that poor guy when he was down,” he said. “I got to the point, I’m 67 years old and if I’d had been 30 years younger, I would have jumped that cop.”

Miron said he has had nightmares about the incident.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna stopped by the building Tuesday to lay a bouquet of white flowers among others that had been brought to pay tribute to Abdi.

McKenna, the Liberal MP for the area, said she wanted to let the family know she was saddened by what happened.

“It’s a really tragic incident and I wanted the family to know and also to offer any support I can give to the family,” McKenna said.

“It’s a very, very difficult time for them and it’s a very difficult time for the community and I just thought it was important to be here.”

]]>An Ottawa man taken to hospital in critical condition after a confrontation with police died of his injuries, a spokeswoman for the family said Monday.

Nimao Ali said the man involved in the incident Sunday is 37-year-old Abdirahman Abdi.

Ali, who lives in the same building as Abdi and his family, said doctors told the family that Abdi was dead 45 minutes before receiving medical attention Sunday.

“Doctors tried their best to revive him and tried everything they could do to bring him back,” Ali said, adding that family was notified of his death Monday afternoon.

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit is investigating Abdi’s death. The SIU investigates whenever there is a death, serious injury or allegation of sexual assault involving police in the province.

It has assigned five investigators and one forensic investigator to the case.

The SIU said police officers responded Sunday morning to a report of a man causing a disturbance. They said officers located the man and, at some point during the confrontation, he suffered medical distress.

Coun. Jeff Leiper for Ottawa’s Kitchissippi Ward said Monday in a statement online that he has received word from many residents offering help to the Abdi family.

“I cannot express fully my grief,” the councillor said in the statement.

Meanwhile, Ali said the family is focusing on Abdi’s funeral arrangements.

“Everything else, they will take it from there one step at a time,” she said.

]]>OTTAWA — The agency responsible for policing federal lands in Ottawa has apologized to two young girls after their lemonade stand was shut down Sunday for not having a permit.

The girls, aged seven and five, set up the stand on a grassy median of an Ottawa parkway that’s closed to vehicular traffic on Sundays and opened to cyclists, roller bladers and others on foot.

They had hoped to raise enough money for summer camp, but after selling over $50 worth of refreshments to parched pedestrians, they were told by an National Capital Commission officer to pack up and leave.

Today, the NCC says the junior conservation officer acted in good faith in enforcing federal land use rules.

But in a statement the commission says the situation could have been handled differently.

It adds it has apologized to the family and has offered to help the girls reach their summer camp fund raising goal.

Before the apology was issued, a local restaurant had to send the two kids to summer camp — and to support other renegade lemonade stand operators if need be.

To this day, along the banks of the Thames in London, you can see people mudlarking, an old practice of looking for loot in the shoreline muck. Mudlarkers are now mostly hobbyists who find the clay tobacco pipes used by long-ago dock workers, but for hundreds of years, mudlarking was an occupation of the disaffected. Left behind by the booming global business of London, the poor were reduced to picking up washed-up scraps. In the wake of the Brexit vote to leave the European Union—a turbid combination of Brussels-loathing, anti-globalization antipathy and a toxic dose of xenophobia—it’s hard not think of it all as revenge of the mudlarkers.

The protectionist resentment of the U.K.’s political mudlarkers is the very same isolationist populism that fuels both Donald Trump on the right and—economically—the residual movement of Bernie Sanders on the left. “They called on a lot of anger among the British electorate, people fed up because the jobs were disappearing thanks to globalization and blaming immigrants for this, even though immigrants were not to blame,” historian Margaret MacMillan told me when I asked her what motivated the Leave vote. This anger has muddied the political waters to the extent it is getting difficult to tell the left from the right. The Leave vote split Conservatives in the U.K. and forced progressive leftists to stand with enemies they had spent decades fighting over trade liberalization.

All this is a stark challenge for Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto, the so-called Three Amigos, as they meet to champion the NAFTA arrangement. More than making climate deals on methane gas emissions and lifting visa restrictions (those will all happen and do matter), these leaders must now urgently restate the more difficult economic case for open markets.

In the short term, as markets pound the U.K., this an easy case to make. NAFTA looks like a stable, sensible economic union, without all the political complications caused by the centralizing, multinational power of Brussels. Still, the protectionist movement is on the rise, even in Canada. An Angus Reid poll released this week found that only one in four Canadians believes NAFTA has been good for the country. More than 30 per cent would like to rip it up and renegotiate. On Tuesday, Donald Trump called it the “worst trade deal in history” and threatened to dump it if he is elected. Given all this, the Brexit vote likely marks the end of a 40-year cycle we can call “peak globalization.” Future trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and even the European free trade deal CETA will be much tougher to negotiate as people pick through the artifacts of the Brexit.

“The material conditions for the Brexit vote were laid by the failure of EU integration and globalization more generally to lift living standards as promised by all the economic models,” argues UNIFOR economist Jim Stanford. “The pro-Brexit vote came very strongly from depressed ‘rust belt’ regions of England and Wales, places where the middle-class dream of stable work and decent social welfare has been ripped to shreds over the past 30 years.” Meanwhile, in centres like London, where there has been wild prosperity, it is not surprising that the Remain vote was strong. The vote exposed and exacerbated a series of sharp divisions that are playing out all over the world: urban vs. rural, rich vs. poor, more educated vs. less educated, citizen vs. immigrants.

“Significant swaths of society have been impoverished and cast aside by the rise of modern neoliberal globalization,” says Stanford. “Given the data on our trade performance and living standards since NAFTA came into effect, it cannot be argued that NAFTA has improved the living standards of most Canadians, no matter how often this is presented as ‘fact.’ ”

Justin Trudeau (left), Enrique Pena Nieto and Barack Obama. (CP)

Of course, the pro-NAFTA side has facts of their own to counter Stanford. NAFTA is a trading area of almost 500 million people with a GDP of about $20 trillion dollars. Since 1993, trade between the three NAFTA countries has quadrupled. Lowering tariffs, the argument goes, boosts trade and drops prices of key goods and services. Millions of new jobs have been created and new industries have blossomed as a result of direct foreign investment from the U.S. into Canada and Mexico. Mexico now exports more cars to the U.S. than Japan does, something directly attributable to NAFTA.

Fair enough. For consumers, NAFTA is a good deal, but for workers it can be brutal. They lose well-paying manufacturing jobs to other jurisdictions, which is why all sorts of northern industrial states in the U.S. loathe the agreement. They’ve seen stagnant wages, loss of benefits and a rise in low-paying service jobs. When people experience these losses, they borrow in order to keep the engine of consumption humming. We saw how that movie played out in 2008.

Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, left, greets Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, right, and U.S. President George Bush, Oct. 7, 1992 in San Antonio, Texas, when the leaders initialed the North American Free Trade Agreement that would create the world’s largest trading bloc. (AP Photo/Marcy Nighswander)

Pro-NAFTA voices believe new jobs are created to offset losses and they like to cite economist Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of “creative destruction,” but those economic ideas are a hard political sell. The truth is, NAFTA does not have a real champion right now. Obama has always been lukewarm on it, while Hillary Clinton has openly attacked the deal. For Trump, it’s a political piñata he swings at regularly. It has been left to that old trade liberalizing war horse Brian Mulroney to pull the NAFTA wagon. In a 2014 Globe and Mail article, he defended NAFTA and urged leaders to be more outspoken about it. “Canada’s trade with Mexico has increased sixfold since NAFTA,” Mulroney wrote. “Investment has doubled since the 1980s.”

In fact, many of the mandarins of trade liberalization from that era still refuse to believe any rational person could actually reject the logic of globalization. “What the Brexit result tells me is that referenda risk results based more on emotion than reason, and binary choices on complex issues are not conducive to rational verdicts,” said Derek Burney, the former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. and former chief-of-staff to Brian Mulroney. “I’m not sure the trade or globalization factors were that much in play in Britain. Seems to me the vote turned on anti-immigrant sentiments and annoyance at the non-accountable nanny-state intrusions from Brussels in everyday life.”

But even Burney concedes that the knock-on effects of the Brexit vote could influence the North American economy. “The anti-free trade rhetoric in the U.S. campaign is a real worry because the effects for Canada and the world could be much more lethal than Brexit, even though trade is not the cause of what ails much of America.”

A Brexit supporter holds a Union Flag at a Vote Leave rally in London, Britain June 4, 2016. (Neil Hall/Reuters)

If your political compass is spinning on this issue, you are not alone. Even the patron saint of free trade had complicated positions on the globalization issue: Margaret Thatcher once championed both free trade and the EU, but eventually turned on the project. Her famous anti-EU speech in 1988 could well have been uttered today by the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels,” she thundered. It was the foreshadowing of today’s sudden political realignment.

You might think, for example, this overt rise in protectionism would politically benefit the left, but the end of “peak globalization” has changed the partisan world in ways that would make Lewis Carroll leap through the looking glass. For years, the Left carried the anti-globalization banner, from the anti-free trade debates here in Canada in the 1980s to the fight against the union busting days of Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. The 1999 WTO protests in Seattle ushered in a new generation of left-wing progressives, who eventually gave rise to the Occupy Wall street movement. The divide between rich and poor was reviving progressive politics, but something happened on the way to the revolution. Fearing an alliance with people like UKIP leader Nigel Farage—who shared their anti-globalization concerns but who they viewed as an anti-immigrant xenophobe—the left in the U.K. suddenly found themselves in bed with open-market conservatives like British Prime Minister David Cameron. How odd to see the left suddenly campaigning for what was, fundamentally, a pro-globalization movement. From Cameron’s point of view, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his left-wing supporters were, to borrow an old Marxist phrase, the useful idiots of globalization—which is why Corbyn’s career is now doomed.

“The left was all over the place in Brexit but it is wrong to say the left as a whole wanted to remain,” says Stanford. “That was the official policy of U.K. Labour, but support for that view was pretty lukewarm. The left-right axis to the debate was muddled because progressives in the U.K. didn’t want to be on the same side as Farage. Also, progressives are thankful for some of the socially progressive measures the EU has helped them win in the U.K. But the legacy of those measures has been dulled by the EU’s more recent harsh orientation.” In other words, there is total confusion as to where they stand.

(Toby Melville/Reuters)

It’s been a clever if dangerous strategy by Trump and Farage to co-opt the left’s anti-globalization rhetoric and overlay it with a politically catalytic anti-immigration message. Progressives now have to figure out how they can extract themselves from the the nativist far right without getting sucked back into the Conservative centre. “Progressive parties worried more about the freedom of movement aspect than the pursuit of globalization agenda writ large,” says NDP MP Nathan Cullen, explaining how Labour ended up supporting a Conservative EU economic vision. “The connection to the outright racist and xenophobic elements of Brexit gave a great many pause to be associated to it.”

Still, Cullen admits the left and the far right actually now have similar messages, which is startling to hear. “Where there is common ground is in the fact that working people haven’t seen a wage adjusted for inflation in almost a generation,” Cullen says. “After the 2008 meltdown the problem of fairness only got worse. We bailed out [the banks] and they gave themselves bonuses. Out-of-touch economic and political elite have fed this ‘movement.’ ”

But what is the movement? In the U.K., both major parties are riven. In the U.S., the Republicans are going through the same split. In Canada, the NDP has lost its way. And even in the centre, where Liberal and red-blue democrats live, it’s getting hard to find a coherent view of growth beyond a kind of situational pragmatism that usually means debt-spending stimulus with long-term promises of balance. Maybe the age of political theory guiding parties is dead?

“I was startled to see [Environment Minister] Catherine McKenna become a free-trade champion, especially given her persistent effort to throttle our energy sector,” says former ambassador Burney, after listening to the minister’s warm words about NAFTA in the lead-up to the Three Amigos summit. “I suspect that this is less conviction on trade and more fear of Trump that is at play.”

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna walks to a meeting with her provincial counterparts Friday January 29, 2016 in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/CP)

The lack of trust in political motivations now afflicts the so-called political elites as much as the ordinary citizen. The result will be less stability and more disorder to come.

“It is still early days for the fallout on Brexit and there will be ‘fissiparous tendencies,’ ” Burney says, using a fancy ten-dollar term historian Paul Kennedy deployed to describe how great empires never last. “But it is not the end of the world, rather the beginning of a new kind of world. Fasten your seatbelt, but do not jump out of the car!”

For Margaret MacMillan, this is not just another political blip. The rise of the angry mudlarkers and the end of peak globalization may unleash dangerous forces of the kind she has spent a lifetime observing. The promise of prosperity for millions has been broken. Opportunists like Marine Le Pen in France, or Donald Trump in the U.S., sense an economic frustration that could bring them their leadership moments. The centre—including Trudeau, Pena Nieto and Obama—have to prove that the system actually works for more people, and can genuinely raise standards of living. The case is getting harder to make by the day. “I have a very uneasy feeling,” MacMillan told me, “that we may look back and say this really was some sort of turning point.”

A group of six tourists stand outside Le Moulin de Provence—a busy bakery in Ottawa’s ByWard Market. They’re on their phones, talking to each other mostly in Mandarin, besides two words: “Obama” and “cookie.”

Le Moulin de Provence sells a lot of baked goodies: doughnuts, cakes, cookies, bread, danishes, pizzas. But its claim to fame is the Obama cookie—a simple shortbread in the shape of a maple leaf, covered in red icing, with “Canada” written in white letters on top.

The prized treats are kept in a display case on the east side of the bakery, next to a similar cookie adorned with Prime Minister Trudeau’s face, and sold in individual, commemorative tins. The case is topped with a large sign that reads “Obama Cookies.” Behind it, a giant poster with a picture of the American president giving his signature grin, holding a small bag of cookies, and flanked on either side by newspaper articles and magazine covers.

It sounds strange, right? A maple-leaf cookie named after the outgoing President of our southern friends? “The concept, when I created this cookie, was to promote the country,” says bakery owner Claude Bonnet, “to promote tourism.” That was until U.S. President Barack Obama stopped by for a visit.

Bonnet, 59 (but with the heart of a 30-year-old, he says) has been running Le Moulin de Provence for 20 years, and never in that time has anything caused more excitement than when the newly elected American President came into his shop in 2009 and bought two of what’s now called the Obama cookie. One for himself, and one for his family back at the White House.

The legend goes something like this: It was a cold, February afternoon. Feb. 19 to be exact. Obama was on his first official visit to Canada and in Ottawa to meet his northern neighbour, Stephen Harper. He must have been getting a bit snack-ish, because on his way back to the airport, his motorcade of 10 police cars, two limousines, and two ambulances made an unannounced stop at Ottawa’s historic ByWard Market. Obama came into the bakery, much to the delight of its staff and patrons, and with a red-maple-leaf cookie in hand, said: “I love this country.”

“He was very friendly with everybody,” Bonnet recalls, “almost like a normal person. He was very enthused to be here.”

Within hours, Bonnet was selling out. “Thousands,” he says. “Thousands.” Immediately after, the bakery was selling 15,000 to 20,000 cookies a month. “Daily, people would ask: more cookie, more cookie, more cookie.”

And still, over seven years later, it’s a bestseller. Before the “Obama visit,” as Bonnet calls it, he told Maclean’s the bakery would sell around 800 a month. Since then, it’s sold a steady 5,000 a month.

The second floor is where the magic happens. The elevator opens to a giant, bustling kitchen: Bakers wearing hats and hairnets, white aprons over white jackets, scurrying around holding trays, icing cookies, and scrubbing the stainless-steel counter tops. Two Japanese ladies, Hisako and Izumi, are in charge of the Obama cookies. When asked if she’s tired of it, Hisako says “never” five times. The two of them ice so many Obama cookies, they joke they dream about it. And they’re going to be dreaming about it a lot more in the coming days. The bakery is ramping up production for the North American leaders’ summit on June 29, planning to capitalize on the fact Obama is in town and Canada Day is right after. Bonnet says he has a special surprise in store for the Three Amigos summit. He won’t say what it is, but hints it has something to do with all three nations: Canada, U.S.A, and Mexico.

When the duke and duchess of Cambridge visited in 2011, Bonnet made a giant maple leaf lollipop and pistachio cookies. When Trudeau won the election last October, he made a cookie with the Prime Minister’s face and the Liberal logo on it, which now shares a case with the Obama cookie.

Claude Bonnet, owner of the Moulin De Provence Bakery, home of the Obama cookie, in the Byward Market in Ottawa June 24, 2016. (Photograph by Blair Gable)

Recently, Bonnet opened a new location on Metcalfe Street and Queen Street. “Nice location,” he says. “Close to the Prime Minister’s Office.” Bonnet is, after all, a businessman. He’s managed to turn a cookie the size of the palm of your hand, and an interaction that likely lasted mere minutes, into a very clever and successful marketing endeavour.

Bonnet says he’s been on walks in the market and has overheard people asking for directions to the “Obama bakery.” But he doesn’t mind that people don’t remember the name “Le Moulin de Provence.” In fact, you don’t even have to step foot in the bakery to see it’s a point of pride. Photos decorate the outside, showing the Obamas holding hands, Obama posing with people on the fateful day, a sign that reads “Obama cookies sold here.” The bakery’s website even has an entire page dedicated to “The Obama Visit.”

And if Obama decides to visit the bakery again while in Ottawa, Bonnet says he’ll first thank the President, then offer him another cookie—this time for free.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-making-of-ottawas-obama-cookie-a-treat-fit-for-a-president/feed/2Enrique Peña Nieto arrives with baggage to Three Amigos summithttp://www.macleans.ca/news/world/enrique-pena-nietos-fall-from-grace/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/enrique-pena-nietos-fall-from-grace/#commentsMon, 27 Jun 2016 16:19:57 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=892979Although the Mexican president once drew comparisons to Trudeau, his fresh-faced appeal has worn off as scandals swirl

In late February, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto travelled for the first time to the town of Iguala, ­some 500 days after students from the Aytoztinapa teacher training school were attacked there by police officers and turned over to criminals.

But he didn’t meet with the 43 missing students’ families, who never accepted the results of an official investigation (called “the historic truth,” by the then-attorney general) or the theory that the young men’s bodies had been burned in an all-night inferno. Instead Peña Nieto stood shoulder-to-shoulder with soldiers, who had been off-limits to investigators’ questions and, according to outside experts reviewing the case, were aware of the unfolding events the night the students were taken, but stood idly by.

The president spoke that day about strong institutions, “a solid banking system” and eight decades of political stability—a calling card of his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled uninterrupted for most of the last century and was brought back to power by Peña Nieto in 2012. On the subject of the students, Peña Nieto referred to “regrettable acts.”

The attack on the students, and Peña Nieto’s aloof response has sent his popularity plunging. “A president who doesn’t get that he doesn’t get it,” the Economist said of the president at the time. Others say it shows a president stuck in Mexico’s political past. “It’s the old PRI: Once you win, it’s over. Your will is the nation’s will and people comply until you’re gone,” says Federico Estévez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

Peña Nieto, who travels to Toronto and Ottawa this week for a state visit and the North American leaders’ summit, speaks often of a country “that dared to change.” Yet for many Mexicans, there’s a sense he’s dragging them back to a bygone era in which the president is seen as supreme and off-limits to scrutiny.

Young, telegenic, fond of photo ops and snapping selfies and always travelling with his fashion-conscious spouse, Peña Nieto, 49, draws comparisons with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Both led once-formidable parties back to power on agendas of change, in spite of suggestions neither man was really ready or had the gravitas for holding high office. It’s still early days for Trudeau. For Peña Nieto, image appeal has had its limits. “He never worked to change the image of ‘good-looking, but dumb’ that people said about him in the 2012 campaign,” says Fernando Dworak, an independent political analyst in Mexico City.

Peña Nieto arrives in Canada suffering unprecedented low popularity for a Mexican president—66 per cent disapprove of his performance, according to the newspaper Reforma, and he has been bogged down by corruption and conflict of interest scandals. In the case of the missing students, outside experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluded that key parts of the investigation were flawed, such as there being no physical evidence of a raging fire that supposedly burned the students’ bodies. They also accused the Mexican government of undermining their work and even carrying out a “smear campaign” against them.

Regional elections held June 5 confirmed the discontent as voters in seven states kicked out PRI governments, including in four strongholds where the party had wielded power for 86 years and where Peña Nieto abided partisans accused to corruption and human rights violations. Sending the incumbent governor to prison was a popular opposition promise. “Things aren’t going into a tailspin, but (Peña Nieto’s) just dogpaddling. The country is, too, to some extent,” Estévez says.

Peña Nieto’s present problems show a shocking fall from grace. He put a fresh face on an old PRI prior to the 2012 elections. He also started pushing economic and regulatory reforms—issues his party torpedoed in Congress over the previous 12 years while in opposition—and opening up the state-run energy sector to foreigners. “When he ran for president, he changed the agenda from drug trafficking to economic issues, which was smart,” says Viridiana Ríos, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington. “He shifted the narrative to a more hopeful economic narrative.”

Peña Nieto won with 38 per cent support and failed to win a majority in Congress. But he recruited a badly divided opposition into an agreement known as the “Pacto por México,” which ended gridlock in Congress and allowed for quick approval of reforms. He took a new approach to the drug cartel and organized crime problems, too: silence, even as vigilante groups grabbed guns in several states to run off criminals carrying out crimes like kidnapping and extortion.

His perceived success nonetheless brought breathless reviews. Time put Peña Nieto on the cover of its international edition with the headline: “Saving Mexico.” Then came the attack on the Ayotzinapa students later that year. “When Ayotzinapa happened and everyone realized it was the problem of a non-functioning justice system and local authorities linked with criminal organizations in a powerful way, his entire narrative of the reforms was questioned,” Ríos says. “It was questioned because it became very clear that he hadn’t solved the problem and his reforms had not addressed this issue, which was corruption and the complicity between local officials and criminal organizations.”

Accusations of corruption followed shortly thereafter. Investigative reporters uncovered documents showing first lady Angelica Rivera bought a $7.2-million mansion from a government contractor. Peña Nieto and his finance minister also were found to have bought homes from contractors, prompting the president to appoint a partisan to investigate. To the surprise of few, the investigation found nothing untoward. Some analysts say the episode was a symptom of an old-school political culture Peña Nieto imported from his home state, where the activities of politicians and businessmen blur. “It’s business-politics,” Estévez says of the political model there. “You want to do well in business? Do your politics right.”

Peña Nieto leaves office in December 2018 and analysts say the prospects for recovery are scant. The world economy isn’t helping, either, especially low oil prices, which used to float much of the budget and have made the energy reform less appealing to investors. The peso plunged, too—no fault of Peña Nieto’s, but something common in past years and associated with political instability.

The approved reforms also aren’t showing enough signs of stimulating economic activity. “Peña Nieto promised if we had structural reforms we would be growing at a rate of five per cent at this moment and if we didn’t we would be condemned to growing only 3.5 per cent,” says Jonathan Heath, an independent economist in Mexico City. “Here we are with all these reforms and in the best of cases we’re only growing 2.5.”

Peña Nieto has tried retaking the reform path recently. He introduced initiatives on liberalizing marijuana laws and enshrining same-sex marriage in the constitution. He may try to claim the anti-corruption mantle, too. Congress belatedly approved laws in June for an anti-corruption system, though not surprisingly, his party and its allies weakened some provisions.

]]>To celebrate 150 years of politicking on Parliament Hill, legendary photographer Peter Bregg gathered its denizens together for an epic class portrait, taken as a hyper-high-resolution Gigapan photo. In the video below, he explains how it went down. Read Shannon Proudfoot’s story on the historic photo here.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/inside-the-making-of-parliament-hills-epic-class-photo/feed/0Zoom in on a historic day honouring 150 years of Parliament Hillhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/zoom-in-on-a-historic-day-honouring-150-years-of-parliament-hill/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/zoom-in-on-a-historic-day-honouring-150-years-of-parliament-hill/#respondWed, 08 Jun 2016 20:35:45 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=883869To mark the 150th anniversary of the first meeting on Parliament Hill, take a (very) close look at a hyper high-res family photo on the Hill

]]>One hundred and fifty years ago today, the Legislature of the Province of Canada first met in the original Parliament Building—the final session of the Province of Canada’s legislature before Confederation.

To celebrate this moment, former Maclean’s photographer Peter Bregg took an extremely high-resolution photo of MPs, senators, security guards and staff on Parliament Hill. The photo was taken with a high-resolution Nikon and 300mm lens, seated in a Gigapan device to capture multiple images and create a high megapixel-rate photo. Use the embedded tool below to zoom in and out to get up close and personal and play Where’s Waldo with your favourite MP. (For best mobile experience, turn your phone to landscape.)

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ottawa-street-not-far-from-parliament-hill-collapses-leaving-gaping-hole/feed/0Snow shovelling is a classic Canadian ritual. Here’s how not to do it.http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/snow-shovelling-is-a-fine-canadian-ritual-heres-how-not-to-do-it/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/snow-shovelling-is-a-fine-canadian-ritual-heres-how-not-to-do-it/#respondFri, 26 Feb 2016 11:25:13 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=838731Scott Feschuk lived through Ottawa's largest one-day snowfall in a century. Here's what he learned.

Ottawa recently endured its largest one-day snowfall in a century, which means there is no better authority to answer your frequently asked questions about the delightful Canadian ritual of snow shovelling.

How can I avoid the delightful Canadian ritual of snow shovelling?

Check the forecast. Maybe it’ll be 24° tomorrow and the snow will immediately melt. If not, maybe it’ll be 24° in five months. You won’t need the car until then, right? And the dog will probably dig itself out.

Fine, I should shovel. What’s the best way to prepare?

It’s important to warm up first. Stretch a little. Get the blood pumping. That’ll definitely counteract the decades of poor life choices that have made you such a flagrant heart-attack risk in the first place.

I’m shovelling. What’s the best injury to fake so I can stop shovelling?

I have a history of using various “conditions” to avoid completing even the simplest of household chores. That light bulb in the basement would surely be changed by now if it weren’t for my recurring “pinkie sclerosis” and “stair jitters.” The key is not overselling it. You don’t want to have to continue faking your injury for weeks to come. That’s why you should avoid claims like, “I wrenched my back,” or, “My spine just fell out.” Instead, go inside and announce that you “tweaked” something—or that you slipped and banged your head on the driveway. The key to successfully feigning a concussion is behaving like James Franco without a concussion.

My neighbour just got a snow blower. What’s the proper way to react?

Aggressive glaring. But you have to be specific with your glares. A snow-blower owner is naturally going to assume you are staring with envy in your eye. You have to squint hard enough to ensure the message gets through: This glare means I am judging you for using a machine to clear your tiny little driveway and also because you never offer to clear my driveway and also because I don’t like your face and you are stupid and next Christmas I am going to “accidentally” run over your dumb inflatable lawn snowman. That’s a lot to convey in a glare. You’ll probably have to practise first in the mirror.

How long should I shovel for?

It’s important to take a break every now and then. If you’re like me—a middle-aged man whose exercise regimen consists of walking almost entirely across the room to reboot the Wi-Fi so Netflix works—you should take a breather every, oh, 25 seconds or so. It’s advisable to lean on the shovel in a casual but manly fashion. If you stare slightly skyward, it will appear as if you’re appreciating the majesty of nature, when in fact you are mostly just hoping your heart won’t explode.

Is there a way to make it less of an ordeal?

You have to get inventive. For instance, we share a driveway with our neighbour on one side. When shovelling near the middle, the logistics demand that I hoist the snow and walk it back across the driveway so I can throw it onto our yard. Although that’s a huge pain, I know it’s wrong to chuck snow into my neighbour’s driveway. Which is why I always check to make sure he’s not looking.

The job is done. What now?

Let me answer that with a story. During the recent blizzard, I had just finished my fourth snow-clearing session of the day. I went inside to do something more enjoyable, like curl up and die. That’s when I heard it coming down the street. Before I made it to the window, the plow had passed—leaving a 1.5-m-high furrow of snow at the end of our driveway. Long story short: You can hear the rest of the details when next season’s Serial podcast probes my murder conviction.

I’m too tired to finish. What should I do?

Snow clearing is all about marketing. If you go back inside and say, “I shovelled one-eighth of the driveway,” it sounds like you gave up. But if you open the door and announce, “I just shovelled 20 million snowflakes,” it sure sounds to me like you put in a full day, hero.

How long can I exploit my shovelling achievement?

You’re probably safe playing up your aches and pains the next morning. And you’re definitely entitled to one (1) reference to the whopping pile of snow that’s now on your front lawn. Most spouses draw the line at a commemorative plaque.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/snow-shovelling-is-a-fine-canadian-ritual-heres-how-not-to-do-it/feed/0How a new Centre Block rose, a century ago, from Parliament’s asheshttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/how-a-new-centre-block-rose-a-century-ago-from-parliaments-ashes/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/how-a-new-centre-block-rose-a-century-ago-from-parliaments-ashes/#respondTue, 02 Feb 2016 21:30:08 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=829531Though a fire destroyed Centre Block 100 years ago, its replacement—designed by an enigmatic architect—gave us the Peace Tower and its mysterious treasures

Above the door to the Prime Minister’s third-floor office on Parliament Hill, a phoenix rises triumphantly from flames. It’s a striking piece of craftsmanship, but easy enough to overlook in the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, where the grey limestone interior is elaborately carved at every turn with figures from heraldry, nature and history.

This week, though, the bird reborn from fire demands special attention. It is a meaningful symbol. A century ago, on Feb. 3, 1916, fire destroyed the original Parliament building. After the charred rubble was cleared, the new Centre Block rose in its place, complete with its iconic Peace Tower—arguably the most widely recognized landmark made by human hands in Canada.

Despite the affection many Canadians feel for the building at the centre of their democracy, its story hasn’t found a secure place in national lore. Surprisingly little is known about John Pearson, the architect whose vision shaped Centre Block down to its smallest details. Still, at least Johanna Mizgala, the curator of the House of Commons heritage collection, is smitten. “Every day when I walk into the building, I see something new,” she says, “and I fall a little bit more intellectually in love with Pearson.”

John Andrew Pearson was born in England in 1867 and immigrated to Canada in 1888. He joined the firm of Frank Darling, an influential Toronto architect, and they went on to design important banks, houses and institutional buildings, though none as significant as Pearson’s Centre Block. Darling rates a long entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, but Pearson, so far, none at all.

Mizgala says the destruction of Pearson’s personal papers in an office fire late in his life left huge gaps researchers haven’t yet filled in. Not only is there no Pearson biography, she says there has been no significant scholarly research completed into his life and work. His masterpiece, however, is not being neglected: Centre Block is scheduled to be emptied in 2018, sending the House to sit next door in the West Block, for at least a decade of extensive “rehabilitation,” including earthquake-proofing and new plumbing and electrical systems, all expected to cost hundreds of millions.

Mizgala’s job makes her responsible for preserving thousands of objects and design elements found on the Hill—from paintings to furniture to ornate plasterwork—and researching them. The 1916 fire looms over her work. The original Parliament building, officially opened in 1866, was celebrated from the outset as a superb interpretation of the era’s Gothic revival style. Fifty years later, fire somehow broke out in the building’s reading room, not far from the House of Commons chamber. One theory is that a lit cigar was flipped into a wastebasket.

The Parliament buildings in Ottawa the morning after the Great Fire of 1916. Ottawa, Canada. Image first published in The New York Times, Feb. 13, 1916 issue. (Underwood and Underwood, N.Y.)

The reading room was well stocked with newspapers, draped over wood dowels. Its pine panelling was freshly oiled and varnished that day. The blaze spread quickly, leaping through a skylight to the roof. It burned through the night. Iron doors separated the main building from the glorious Library of Parliament, which was thus spared, along with the nearby East and West blocks.

Those surviving buildings represent a priceless legacy of the Confederation-era parliamentary precinct. And the new Centre Block, with its pointed Gothic arches and copper roofs, was designed to blend in. On a deeper level, though, Mizgala says the Centre Block captures the early-20th-century mood of a young country, at war when its construction began, and a feeling that it was coming of age.

By today’s standards, the design and building went quickly. Immediately after the fire, Pearson was hired, along with Montreal architect Jean-Omer Marchand, to survey the ruins. They quickly ruled out merely rebuilding a replica of the old two-storey building. Instead, they proposed a modern concept, using steel-frame construction and load-bearing concrete, and adding a floor to expand the office space. The new Centre Block opened in 1922, with the Peace Tower finished in 1927.

But up-to-date engineering was far from the architects’ only preoccupation. They decided on a cleaner, more modern plan than the original. Marchand played a key role in setting in place that symmetrical concept, but then he stepped back, Mizgala says, into the role of “sounding board and consultant” to Pearson. It was the Toronto architect who obsessively elaborated on the original vision and executed it.

A central corridor—running from the main entrance under the Peace Tower at the front to the Library of Parliament at the back—divides the building neatly in two. The Senate is on the east side, the House on the west. A good place to get a sense of the orderly layout is midway between the legislative chambers, in the two-storey Confederation Hall, where a central column draws a visitor’s eye upward to vaulted ceilings, accented by intricate stone carving.

But Mizgala urges a visitor to look down, too. “On the floor you have this incredible reference to the building as a kind of ship of state,” she says. At the foot of that main column is a carving of Poseidon, Greek god of the sea, and the coloured marble of the floor around him forms a compass, surrounded by bands representing the sea, land and universe. “The idea was that if the sea was rough, there was still a calm within the ship,” Mizgala says.

Pearson continued that ship-of-state theme to other corners of his Centre Block. For instance, the office he designed for the prime minister—the one with that phoenix over its door—features a plaster ceiling, intricately carved with fanciful sea creatures and portraits of explorers, like John Cabot and Christopher Columbus. He wanted the prime minister to be associated with trustworthy captains and good navigators.

Mizgala says the prime minister’s office is only one of about 40 special rooms for which Pearson paid close attention to the details of decoration, and custom-designed furniture like chairs and desks. But the official Opposition leader’s office, a floor below the prime minister’s, is more special than most.

Sir Robert Borden was prime minister at the time of the 1916 fire, and launched the work of designing and building the new Centre Block. When William Lyon Mackenzie King became Liberal leader in 1919, he took special interest in the project. He consulted extensively with Pearson about the office he would occupy as official Opposition leader, and decided to remain in it rather than trading up after he became prime minister in 1921.

Mizgala says King’s office has a “mid-to-late-17th-century feel,” in keeping with Pearson’s scheme for various Centre Block rooms to echo different periods in history. “So it’s very intricately designed. Incredible oak woodwork. Teak and ebony floor,” she says. “And then, on the walls, there are frescoes.” The murals depict scenes of knights in armour, with different panels representing leadership virtues like wisdom and justice. In King’s diaries, Mizgala says, he mentions asking Pearson to have his late mother represented. Her face is strongly believed to have been the model for an angel appearing to a knight in a vision. King’s closeness to his mother has often been satirized, but Mizgala doesn’t laugh, noting that King’s sister had died in 1915; his mother in 1917. “There’s a natural [tendency], if you’re having an influence on the space, to sort of personalize it in that way,” she says.

Fine points like the angel’s face in the Opposition leader’s office and the nautically themed plasterwork in the prime minister’s are rarely glimpsed by the public. But Mizgala says they are part of a unified vision carried through into the main public spaces, like the Confederation Hall, or the House chamber itself, with its stained glass and painted linen ceiling. Pearson chose mainly Canadian stone and wood throughout.

Decorative elements were designed to inspire those elected to serve, and Pearson intentionally left blank spaces in the Tyndall limestone, quarried in Manitoba, for future stone carvers to fill with images from Canada in the decades to come, a tradition that still continues.

The Peace Tower. (Photograph by Carla Antonio)

The Peace Tower stands apart, though, quite literally, having been completed last and positioned a few steps in front of the main building. It is Pearson’s expression of gratitude for peace after the horror of the First World War. Its heart is an interior memorial chamber, a shrine to the war dead.

But, in a poignant 1927 letter to King, Pearson focuses on how the tower would look as visitors approached Parliament Hill, a sight many Canadians have committed to memory.

“In all my thoughts of the tower, peace was dominant,” he wrote. “I believe there is a quiet peaceful dignity about it. I somehow bring myself to read it that way—no matter what troubles and worries and differences of opinion take place in the building. I feel that one cannot approach the building up the centre road without experiencing its mute appeal for toleration, moderation, dignity and peace.”

On what the letter reveals about Pearson, Mizgala says, “He had the soul of a poet.” She’s thought of trying to write his biography herself. Somebody should. Yet it’s not clear he would have craved an account beyond what he built, especially of course the Centre Block and the Peace Tower.

Pearson ended that letter to King by apologizing for his “unpolished” prose. Then he went on, with a touch of justified professional pride, “I would rather write in stone than on paper.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/how-a-new-centre-block-rose-a-century-ago-from-parliaments-ashes/feed/0A century later, the mystery of the Parliament Hill fire remains unsolvedhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-century-later-the-mystery-of-the-parliament-hill-fire-remains-unsolved/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-century-later-the-mystery-of-the-parliament-hill-fire-remains-unsolved/#respondSun, 31 Jan 2016 21:17:39 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=828741The House of Commons will mark the centennial of the enduringly mysterious tragedy on Wednesday

The Parliament Buildings in Ottawa are shown before the1916 fire. (National Archives/CP)

OTTAWA – It’s difficult to imagine the scale of the trauma, the wartime anxiety, the shock, the anger, that would have engulfed the nation 100 years ago when the seat of the federal government went down in flames.

Seven people died that bitterly cold night on Feb. 3, 1916, when the old Centre Block burned down — the building that saw figures like Macdonald, Bowell, Tupper and Laurier pass through its halls and sit in the Dominion’s first House of Commons.

“The grand old tower put up a magnificent fight for survival. Standing while the support seemed to have burned away, it sent a solid pillow of twisting, billowing gold up into the winter night,” Ottawa Citizen reporter Charles Bishop wrote.

“Finally, it came down, crashing into the concourse in front and with it, carrying the huge, old clock which had stayed illuminated and kept on striking to the last.”

On Wednesday, the House of Commons will mark the tragedy by displaying the wooden mace that was first used as a replacement after the fire. The House will also hear the names of the victims read out, including Nova Scotia MP Bowman Brown Law.

“At one time Sir Wilfrid’s voice faltered and entirely broke,” reads an Ottawa Journal account of Laurier’s speech the day after the 1916 blaze, as the Commons sat at the Victoria Memorial Museum.

“The veteran white-haired statesman whose eloquence re-echoed through the halls of the Commons in ruins was overcome with depth of feeling.”

Laurier would die before the new buildings opened.

The Parliament Hill fire is one of the enduring mysteries of Canadian history.

It happened in the middle of the First World War, and there were many at the time who believed it had been deliberately set by German saboteurs.

Just weeks before the fire, an unsavoury American businessman told a newspaper editor that Germans were planning an attack on Ottawa’s capital buildings — the U.S. was not yet at war. American justice officials had received the tip, but the message apparently never made it to Canadian authorities.

Still, an official inquiry came up with no firm conclusion on whether it was arson, a careless smoker, or maybe faulty wiring.

“You can look at all the facts, and fit them into these theories as best you can, and come to your own conclusion,” said Don Nixon, a retired Parliament Hill engineer who explores the arguments in his book “The Other Side of the Hill.”

“I think it probably was deliberate, I say probably because we don’t know. The things we know about the fire, it seems to me point in that direction.”

The Commons had been sitting that night, when fire broke out in the nearby, wood-lined reading room chocked with newspapers. The flames rose up quickly, spreading with the help of the old ventilation system.

The Speaker of the House, Albert Sevigny, rushed to get his children and wife out of the building as the flames spread into his quarters. A guest jumped into a fire department net from a floor above, while two other women visitors perished from smoke inhalation.

“I realized that our poor friends were dead and I practically collapsed myself — I was taken out by two of my men there,” Sevigny told a special inquiry later that month.

Martin Burrell, the minister of Agriculture, suffered burns to his hands and face in the fire. Prime Minister Robert Borden ran coatless and hatless into the night.

Foolhardy reporters like Grattan O’Leary climbed through a window into their main floor workroom to grab precious typewriters.

“By this time a great crowd had gathered,” O’Leary wrote in his memoirs. “It was a bitterly cold night, and people caught in the building were coming down ladders or leaping into the snow beneath the windows.”

Inside the current building, which opened for sittings only four years later in 1920, there are a few reminders of the old.

The recently scrubbed-up West Block, including the orangey-pink Potsdam stone, is a reminder of what the old Centre Block would have looked like in its prime.

The large painting of young Queen Victoria in the Senate foyer was cut right out of the frame the night of the fire by quick-thinking staff.

More importantly, there is the Library of Parliament — the old pine carving and wood panelling a throwback to what some of the old Centre Block would have been like. The blue iron work with gilded tips along the library’s exterior also went around the original building.

A steel fire door, and plenty of firefighters, helped save the structure and the books inside.

“The whole thing was a work of art, and from that standpoint of view it was a priceless loss,” said Lucile Finsten, co-author of the 1988 book “Fire on Parliament Hill!”

House of Commons curator Johanna Mizgala points out that the small alcove outside the library is also from the original Centre Block, something few visitors and even MPs might realize. (Parliament Hill shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was brought down in that very spot two years ago.)

“We only think of the library as a separate entity because the original building isn’t there anymore. The way it was designed, it wasn’t a library and a Parliament building, it was one entity,” said Mizgala.

“You can see the shift in the two kinds of stone. You get a sense of what the walls and the physicality of the old building must have been.”

My friend Andrew Cohen is vexed that the city of Ottawa will not widen the airport parkway, as we call the two-lane road out to the airport. Sorely vexed, ladies and gentlemen! The Ottawa Citizen columnist—former Globe editorialist, award-winning author, one-time resident of Washington and Berlin—gets vexed about Ottawa every several months, and this latest failure to widen the “heavily congested” parkway, a “critical, clogged artery,” has set him off once again.

“For its lack of ambition and absence of imagination, Ottawa is the worst capital in the G7,” Cohen wrote in what quickly became the most-read article in the Citizen this week. “It is unable to get anything done very quickly, whether repairing a ceremonial thoroughfare like Sussex Drive or building light rail, which will arrive decades after other cities.”

By this point, longtime Cohen readers can more or less sing along. “For mediocrity, there’s Lansdowne Park,” Cohen writes. “A (nice) stadium, shops, restaurants and condos, with a park and a wading pool as consolation.” Doesn’t sound tragic, although there is in fact no wading pool. “It replaces a sea of cracked asphalt and a crumbling stadium, and for contented Ottawans, that’s fine.” Ah. Good. Yes?

No. “But it’s just not interesting, let alone innovative.”

Ah. “And we squandered a once-in-a-century chance to remake Ottawa’s image, for example to do for our city what the Guggenheim Museum did for Bilbao, Spain.” Here one hears the far-off plaintive call of logic, as one so often does when reading an Andrew Cohen rant about Ottawa, because I am pretty sure Bilbao is not a G7 capital. But passons. There are the obligatory to-be-sure paragraphs, in which Cohen allows a few scraps of hope to drift into his readers’ minds—“Light rail is coming, though it won’t stop in Confederation Square. The brutalist National Arts Centre is getting a new glass facade, and will no longer look like a Stalinist detention centre”—before crushing the hope with a summary graf.

Like this: Whatever else Ottawa may be, he writes, it sure isn’t “a modern, progressive capital, a repository of history and culture, a reflection of our achievements and dreams as a nation.” So weep for the critical arteries, Ottawans!

It is good to be consistent. This week’s rant follows many, many previous columns from the Cohen pen, including “What passes for vision in Ottawa is simply complacent creativity,” from Oct. 15, 2014 (“We do not know how to make the Ottawa River and the Rideau Canal more interesting”); “Ottawa a capital in name only,” from Sept. 1, 2013 (“A toy capital pretending to be a real one”); “Canadians don’t love Ottawa,” from Nov. 29, 2011 (“Encourage innovative street vendors and different street food”); “The trouble with Ottawa is Ottawans,” from Aug. 18, 2011 (“Ottawa wouldn’t know a new idea—let alone a big idea—if it was accosted by one”); “A city waiting to grow up,” from Oct. 26, 2010 (“the ByWard Market remains uncovered”); “A city that has given up,” from May 10, 2007 (“Money marts patronized by drifters”); “The capital of condescension,” from Feb. 14, 2006 (“a town without climax”); and “A great city if only it tried,” from May 17, 2005 (“Something about giving up and not bothering”).

It is hard to avoid repetition. Cohen wrote that the National Arts Centre resembles “a Stalinist interrogation centre,” in those words precisely, in five separate columns published in 2007, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2016. I worry about taste. Here’s what happened in Stalinist interrogation centres: people were tortured to death. Pretty frequently. Tonight at the NAC, the family of a former prime minister will hear a bold new composition by a Canadian composer whose music is widely performed outside Canada, following a panel discussion on reconciliation with First Nations attended by author Joseph Boyden and Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau. The pageantry is almost secondary to the work Alexander Shelley, the best young British orchestral conductor of his generation, has done to revitalize what was already a fantastic orchestra. Increasingly these days, if you’re not at the NAC on a school night, that’s your problem. I’m not sure what’s happening in Rome tonight, but I don’t feel particularly cheated.

Cohen has a larger theme, which I’ll get to. But words matter, and the awesome pettiness of his whinging is breathtaking to behold. It is true the new light-rail network, being built on time and on budget under the guidance of a mayor who has consistently been beneath Cohen’s contempt, will not stop at Confederation Square. It will stop 600 m west of Confederation Square. Then it will stop again, 300 m east of Confederation Square. This will make Confederation Square nearly impossible to reach by any LRT rider who is encased in an iron lung. Cohen wonders why Ottawa “cannot produce better, more reasonable restaurants.” How do greater cities produce such marvels? Do they excrete them? Better restaurants generally cost more, and I’m not sure readers outside Ottawa will shed a tear at the news that when I eat at such dynamite Ottawa venues as Fraser Café, Whalesbone, Beckta or Gezellig, I am generally asked to pay before leaving. Meanwhile, if we’re being honest, a lot of Paris bistros are horror shows. A lunch of wilted sushi in London will set you back half a week’s pay. You want to eat well in Washington, you pay K Street prices. Now, Washington does have better jazz clubs, but the last time I was at Twins Jazz on U Street somebody was getting shot in the discotheque downstairs. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.

But of course the real complaint of most people who find Ottawa disappointing is not that it refuses to build a train station within six feet of a specified bullseye, or that it has not yet slipped the surly bonds of basic restaurant economics. It is that Ottawa has no Champs Elysées, no British Museum, no Lincoln Memorial, no Coliseum ruins. It does not have a very large number of the sort of things that make one feel impressed with oneself when one realizes one resides in a Place that Matters.

There are reasons for this. They are obvious. They are the sort of thing one might finally bother to acknowledge, when taking one’s 40th run at the same topic.

Ottawa does not have wide boulevards because the capitals that do were built by autocratic rulers who hoped at some point to march a victorious army down those boulevards. Paris, London, Rome and Berlin (!) have all, at many points in their very long histories, been war capitals. Washington was designed at a time when Americans were not yet entirely sure whether they wanted to shun imperialist European models or copy them. Tokyo and Berlin were relatively easy to rebuild along impressive lines because they were shattered at brutal human cost as the price of launching a world war. On a single March night in 1945, 700,000 firebombs fell on Tokyo, killing untold tens of thousands and levelling an area much larger than that of present-day Ottawa. This is an actual thing that happened. It directly influenced Tokyo’s development for decades to come. I’m OK with a capital that still adheres to the humble grid of its lumber-town origins.

Cohen worries that Ottawa is not innovative in “recovered green space.” It depends where you look. Gatineau Park is 105 times the size of Central Park in Manhattan and 172 times the size of Berlin’s Grosser Tiergarten. I suppose if it were only triple their size he might have a point. Wait, no he wouldn’t.

Onward. Unlike almost every other G7 capital, Ottawa is not the capital of a unitary state that spent decades under an authoritarian ruler who extorted tithes from the hinterland to build monuments to his greater glory. Napoleon, Bismarck (to pick the most polite of available German options), the Caesars, the Windsors: Handy when you’re building a tourist hotspot of the future. Ottawa is the capital of a federation, as are such sleepy burgs as Canberra, Brasilia, Bonn—because for decades, Bonn was West Germany’s capital—and, indeed, Washington in the years before lobby money started to sluice down that city’s streets.

To say that Ottawa is a federal capital and shouldn’t be home to most of the country’s class or prestige is not to make an excuse for a weakness, it is to give a name to a strength. I know federalism is tiresome for people who find a two-block walk to Confederation Square daunting, but there is a reason why federations are over-represented among the world’s most prosperous countries, and I really don’t feel cheated, as an Ottawan, when I visit the Winnipeg Art Gallery or the Art Gallery of Ontario or the Citadelle in Quebec City or the Ship Pub in St. John’s. We built our Canada where Canadians live, and since they live all over, we built it all over. It was one of “our achievements and dreams as a nation,” to coin a phrase, to do precisely that.

Canada is also a country with, by and large, a long and profound attachment to the liberal European idea that the state needn’t build monuments to itself because it would prefer to invest in citizens’ human capital when it is not simply letting them keep more of the money they earned.

Paris is the ancient capital of Jacobin central planners, dotted with museums and cultural landmarks built, in many cases, not as odes to France’s genius but as mementoes from presidents nearing their term limits. Many are white elephants, like the Bastille opera house that never gets mentioned on anyone’s list of things Ottawa should copy. Washington’s monuments are lovely, but the finest of them remembers a president who was gunned down in the last days of a devastating civil war. And its finer restaurants do a better job of mocking the American dream than of celebrating it.

Ottawa is looking a bit dog-eared these days. Of course: it has come through a nasty few decades. Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien spent a decade cauterizing a ruinous public-debt spiral. Most of Stephen Harper’s decade was about coping with the aftermath of the worst global financial crisis in my lifetime. Justin Trudeau is eager to patch up Montreal’s highways before more of them fall on somebody. Which project should we have postponed for quicker access to Ottawa’s airport? Which, incidentally, is 15 minutes from downtown by taxi. I promise you there is no easier airport to reach in the G7, except for Reagan National, a permanent monument to the U.S. Congress’s ability to safeguard its own prerogatives.

In earlier columns, Cohen used to complain that Ottawa had no light rail. It is being built. He didn’t like the NAC. It is being spectacularly refurbished. He worried for the library. On the day his most recent column was published, the National Archives announced plans to work with the Ottawa Public Library on a new downtown showcase. He was upset that the big hockey rink is a half hour from downtown. Plans to return it downtown are well advanced. Meanwhile, I return from Los Angeles, where some locals were buzzing about Janet Cardiff’s art installation Forty-Part Motet, created at Canada’s National Gallery, and others were lining up for a Lawren Harris retrospective curated by the comedian Steve Martin, using paintings on loan from the same National Gallery.

If Ottawa is not full to brimming with the plunder of empire, if it is forced to share its glories with residents of provincial capitals across a continent, if it has fewer marble monuments in a country with more happy citizens, I’m not sure it stands as any kind of failure or disappointment. I know a writer who used to admit as much. “It is unfair to compare Ottawa to Washington, Paris, London, Vienna or Rome, great imperial cities which are, or were, the cockpit of Empire and the hub of their universe,” Andrew Cohen wrote in the Ottawa Citizen on Aug. 4, 2002. Back then he thought the National Arts Centre conferred “a sense of presence.” If any part of Ottawa is getting seriously worn out, it is certainly the tired rhetoric of its most dedicated Cassandra.

These passages are from the Update of Economic and Fiscal Projections released by the Department of Finance a few weeks ago:

[P]rojected tax revenues are being dragged down by lower expected nominal GDP, while projected expenses are being driven up by higher expected Employment Insurance claims…

These developments have reduced the projected budgetary balance by about $6.0 billion per year, on average, relative to Budget 2015, resulting in deficits of $3.0 billion in 2015–16…

These are the fiscal projections inherited by this Government.

As I noted at the time, this narrative didn’t pass my sniff test: the year-to-date budget balance through September was actually running ahead of Joe Oliver’s projection. Moreover, when you broke down the new Finance projections, the main factors driving the downward revision to the budget balance were “other revenues” and three impenetrable sentences about pension liabilities. Tax revenues in 2015-16 were projected to come in only $600 million below the estimate in last April’s budget.

But even that may be too pessimistic. The October Fiscal Monitor was released near the end of December, so we now have data for the first seven months of fiscal year 2015-16. And while a story in which weakened economic growth has resulted in weaker growth in government revenues still makes sense, it’s getting harder and harder to make that story fit the data.

I’m going to use two sources of data here: the monthly Fiscal Monitor (FM) and the annual Fiscal Reference Tables (FRT). Both report federal revenues and expenditures. In principle, the 12-month sums from the FM from April to the following March should correspond to the annual totals for the fiscal year. In practice, they don’t: often there are budget items that end up being added to the annual totals without being attributed to a particular month. But the FM numbers track the annual numbers closely enough that they still give us a good idea of where the annual numbers are going to end up. In the charts below, the lines represent the 12-month moving sums from the FM, and the dots are the annual numbers. The accounting rules were changed twice recently, and that complicates things. It looks as though the historical annual numbers have been revised to correspond with the current rules.

Here is the budget balance:

The accounting changes do not appear to have affected how the budget balance is calculated. With a few exceptions (notably 2010 and 2014), the monthly numbers generally match the annual FRT data.

In the 12 months through to October, the federal government ran a surplus of $7.5 billion. In order to bring that down to a deficit of $3 billion by March, the budget balance would have to drop at a pace similar to what we saw at the onset of the 2008-9 financial crisis. This could still happen, but how?

Here are program expenditures:

You can see the effect of the accounting changes here. One of the things that happened in 2012 is that certain tax treatments such as the GST rebate were re-classified as spending, instead of being subtracted off of revenues. This had the effect of increasing both stated revenues and expenditures, leaving the balance unchanged.

Program spending is still below the projection, but it’s increasing. On current trends, it’s not unreasonable to believe that spending will come in as projected. A story in which a deficit in 2015-16 is caused by higher-than-expected spending would be driven by a spike in the last 5 five months of the fiscal year. This could still happen, but it would be something new.

This next chart doesn’t tell you much, and I include it as a reminder of how hard it was to track direct program spending when the Conservatives were in power. I can’t make head nor tail of this:

On to Employment Insurance:

Once again, it looks as though the EI balance is on track to hit the Department of Finance’s projection.

The surprise is on the revenue side. Here again, you see the jump after the 2012 accounting change, and it looks as though the annual FRT data have been revised to reflect this change in order to maintain comparability across time.

The April budget projected budgetary revenues of $290.3 billion, and Finance revised this down to $288.4 billion in November. The PBO, for its part, revised the projection up to $291.6 billion in its November update. From this, I infer that the PBO gives more weight to the Fiscal Monitor than does Finance, because the 12-month moving sum through October for budgetary revenues was $292.1, which is higher than even the PBO revision. It’s possible that revenues could go sideways for the next five months, but then again, if they increased steadily through the bad news of the first half of the year, why would they suddenly change course now?

We all know about how the Conservatives juiced the revenue numbers for 2014-15 with one-time sales of assets such as their holdings in GM, so let’s look at some of the more important tax revenue items. Changes in economic activity should show up there.

First is personal income tax (PIT) revenue:

Both Finance and the PBO expect personal income tax revenues to come in below the April budget estimates, and that assessment looks plausible. On current trends, it’s unlikely that PIT revenues will overshoot those projections.

The GST is another story. Both Finance and the PBO have revised estimates for GST revenue up since April, but hitting that projection now looks to be a matter of GST revenues suddenly abandoning the recent upward trend and heading sideways until March. Again, it could happen, but again, it would be something new.

The real surprise is corporate income tax (CIT) revenues:

Finance’s November projection for CIT was unchanged from April at $36.8 billion and the PBO’s estimate is $37.8 billion: both numbers are down from $37.9 billion that the CIT generated in 2014-15. But CIT revenues through the 12 months through October were $42.6 billion. Hitting those projections would require a crisis-style meltdown. It’s reasonable to expect that an economic slowdown would show up in CIT revenues with a bit of a lag, but the last time we had that kind of a crisis, the effect on revenues was immediate.

Finally, this last chart puts the PIT, the GST and the CIT together:

There may be some broader implications of this apparent disconnect between what’s happening in the economic accounts data (GDP and so forth) and what you’d expect these developments should have on the ground. It’s not as though economic growth and oil prices have exceeded forecasts; they haven’t. So why has tax revenue come in ahead of what was projected? If it’s a modeling issue, then maybe those forecasts for future years should be revisited. Or are we experiencing one of those Wile E. Coyote moments in which we are momentarily suspended in mid-air before the inevitable plunge?

Either way, I don’t see how you can tell a story in which slower-than-expected economic growth and lower-than-expected oil prices have resulted in slower-than-expected tax revenue generation. At least, I don’t see how you can use the past tense while telling it.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/why-has-federal-tax-revenue-exceeded-projections/feed/2Ottawa mayor says city needs money to pay for ‘market rate’ housing for refugeeshttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ottawa-mayor-says-city-needs-money-to-pay-for-market-rate-housing-for-refugees/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ottawa-mayor-says-city-needs-money-to-pay-for-market-rate-housing-for-refugees/#commentsThu, 26 Nov 2015 23:24:26 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=801847With social housing at a premium, and long waiting lists for it, using subsidized housing to accommodate refugees is out of the question, said Mayor Jim Watson

]]>OTTAWA – Cities are going to need federal and provincial financial support very soon if they are to house 25,000 refugees over the next few months, says the mayor of Canada’s capital city.

Ottawa can accommodate between 800 and 2,000 refugees, or 350 to 450 families, says Jim Watson.

But rental accommodation — likely at market rates — is going to be expensive, he said Thursday, and other levels of government will have to provide cash to pay for the housing as the refugees arrive, probably within the next two weeks.

“We’re going to need some financial resources because most of the refugees will, in fact, be going into private apartments, which are at market rent,” Watson said outside the British High Commission on Thursday after helping to launch the local Salvation Army’s Christmas charity drive.

Watson said he stressed the need for cash in speaking Wednesday with Ontario’s municipal affairs and housing minister, Ted McMeekin, and got a positive response.

“There certainly is a lot of good will,” said Watson.

“They understand that we’ll do a lot of the grunt work to get the places ready, but we’re going to need help to help pay for them.”

With social housing at a premium, and long waiting lists for it, using subsidized housing to accommodate refugees is out of the question, he said.

Watson added that while most people in Ottawa support aiding the refugees, there is a small segment of the population voicing criticism and calling on the city to help struggling families already living in the capital before assisting new arrivals.

“I would say it’s probably 10-to-one in favour of us accepting refugees (but) there’s always a small element in society where people who just don’t want refugees, ‘take care of your own,’ that kind of an attitude,” he said.

“But the fact of the matter is that (refugees) are suffering, winter is coming, they’ve lost everything, and it’s the least we can do.”

There was a mix of public reaction Wednesday — ranging from pride to outrage — to online articles detailing the announcement of a Quebec government plan to take in 7,300 Syrian refugees by 2017.

“I’m a Quebecer and I’m glad we are doing our part,” one commentator wrote on Twitter.

“Shame on Canada for refusing Jewish refugees in the ’40s. I’m glad we aren’t doing the same mistake twice.”

“Let’s get our own house in order first,” another commentator wrote while lamenting the widespread use of food banks by some of Canada’s poorest.

Manitoba revealed its plan Thursday to welcome upwards of 2,000 government and privately sponsored refugees.

It’s expected most or all of them will settle initially in Winnipeg.

The province issued a call to landlords of rental units to step up with offers of housing for refugees who are not privately sponsored.

Rental units would be paid for by the federal government for one year, the province said.

In Ontario, behind-the-scenes logistics in preparation for the refugees’ arrival have been frenzied, with municipal, provincial and federal officials in constant contact with each other to ensure they are ready, said Watson.

Some local organizations have come forward with offers to provide housing, he said, including a group in the city’s west end that has 40 winterized cabins available.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ottawa-mayor-says-city-needs-money-to-pay-for-market-rate-housing-for-refugees/feed/2Hy’s: Where secrets were swapped over supperhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/hys-where-secrets-were-swapped-over-supper/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/hys-where-secrets-were-swapped-over-supper/#commentsThu, 10 Sep 2015 23:00:14 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=754339For years, Ottawa journalists and politicians traded gossip at Hy’s steakhouse. In 2016, it closes its doors. John Geddes on the end of an era.

Like a bar nut carelessly plunked into a glass of merlot, news this week that Ottawa’s Hy’s Steakhouse & Cocktail Bar will be closing next February sent ripples through Parliament Hill social networks. Truth be known, though, the plush Queen Street bar and restaurant is a few years past its storied heyday as a hangout for politicians and journalists.

Still, Hy’s place in the capital’s power-brokering lore is secure. It opened in 1985 and soon attracted a well-connected crowd. I was never a habitué, but I called Greg Weston, who was once among the regulars, to ask why Hy’s—and places like it—matter. A former investigative journalist on the Hill, Weston is now a strategic communications adviser at the polling firm Nanos Research.

Q: How did Hy’s fit in the scheme of things around Parliament Hill?

A: There has always been a Hy’s. Before Hy’s, it was Clair de Lune, in the Byward Market, a place where it just happened that politicians, senior staffers and, of course, journalists, would go. Before that, for decades, it was the Press Club. I have a saying that journalism in Ottawa starts at 5 p.m. I don’t remember breaking a lot of stories sitting at my desk.

Now, more than ever, you need to get people in government out of their environment. When they’re at their desks, when they’re in their offices, no matter whether they’re in a political office or a bureaucratic office, they are in a bunker.

Q: And you believe it’s become even more the case lately than in earlier eras?

A: It’s a strange thing. You’d think that if you’re paranoid talking with somebody on the phone in your office, you’d be ultra-paranoid being seen with somebody in a place like Hy’s, where you’re almost automatically going to be seen. But I think it was the nature of the place. They’d always have the cover of saying, “Well, I just ran into him.” And a lot of times that’s what did happen. Nobody’s there handing out brown envelopes, but to sit and have a relaxed chat about the how and why of what’s going on in town.

Q: As a reporter, you’d get some context, some background.

A: Or maybe what you’d get is an offhand comment and you’d just pick up the phone the next day and say, “I know that was just casual conversation, but could we follow up on this?”

Q: From the current era of Tories, or maybe the one just past, I think of Jim Flaherty and John Baird, and their staffs, as having been among the more prominent Hy’s guys. Is that right?

A: Yes. And Lisa Raitt.

Q: The late Jim Flaherty, as finance minister, institutionalized a tradition of drinks at Hy’s on the evening after he’d delivered a budget. Did that add to the Hy’s lustre, or diminish the sense of it being a sort of exclusive hangout?

A: That was a pretty extraordinary evening. In the Harper years, I don’t think there was another occasion where you had free mixing of senior cabinet ministers, journalists and staffers. Really free mixing. Anybody could go. I can’t think of another event in the year where that happens.

Q: What about the annual Politics & the Pen gala, put on by the Writer’s Trust of Canada?

A: Politics & the Pen, maybe.

Q: Some critics of the Ottawa swirl would say the Hy’s sort of mixing is bad. It creates a cozy relationship, rather than adversarial one we sometimes like to think press and politicians should have. What would you say to that?

A: Well, since you’ve used the word cozy, I’ve got a lot more information that I’ve been able to convey to the public over the years being cozy than being adversarial.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/hys-where-secrets-were-swapped-over-supper/feed/1Q&A: How Ottawa bungled its plan for a new monumenthttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/qa-how-ottawa-bungled-its-plan-for-a-communism-monument/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/qa-how-ottawa-bungled-its-plan-for-a-communism-monument/#commentsWed, 22 Jul 2015 17:36:29 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=739471In conversation with urban design guru Larry Beasley on the lessons we can learn from Ottawa's plans for the victims of communism memorial

Larry Beasley, Vancouver’s celebrated former director of planning, is in demand for his expertise on urban design everywhere from Dallas to Rotterdam, Moscow to Abu Dhabi. But, as chair of the National Capital Commission (NCC)’s advisory committee on planning, design and realty, Beasley’s advice to the federal government on its planned Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Ottawa has been rejected. The Conservative government is pressing ahead with the controversial monument, although the design has been scaled back. In this exclusive interview, Beasley spoke about the best way to plan memorials. This is an edited version of our conversation.

Q: Before we get into the victims of communism memorial, let’s talk briefly about what works. Among modern examples, the 1982 Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, designed by Maya Lin, seems to be the gold standard. What made it so successful?

One of the reasons it resonates with people is that it was such an elegant and beautiful design. If something comes out of the design process and it is remarkable, people tend to forget if there were sins committed in the process. The second thing is there was a wide appetite at the time in America for some sort of monument to the Vietnam conflict. So that, too, helps.

Having said that, the Second World War memorial that was also put on the Mall in Washington was very controversial, partly because it expressed itself a lot more strongly in the landscape of the Mall. The Vietnam memorial is a very modest, gentle kind of memorial, and probably more impactful because of that.

Q: It’s strikingly modern, though. One might have wondered: A black wall inscribed with names—will that go over well with people?

As an immigrant to Canada from America, and having had friends who fought in that war, it was very moving for me, partly because of the very unusual design.

Yasmeen Gholmieh/AFP/Getty Images

Q: Is there a way we can bridge from talking about something as successful as Maya Lin’s wall to the outcry caused by the planned victims of communism memorial in Ottawa?

It’s contrasting, in that the monument that’s now proposed is a much stronger expression in the landscape, and it is in a more touchy kind of location.

And also on Parliament Hill. The Mall in Washington is important, but the location of the Vietnam memorial is at the other end from the major government facilities. It’s not competing with the image of the American government, represented by the dome of the Capitol and the open space leading up to it.

And it’s a kind of theme that would resonate a lot more broadly with Americans than the theme here would resonate with Canadians. The theme of [the victims of communism] isn’t of the stature [to create] the wide public understanding that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would have in America at the time it was put forward. It was very much in the top consciousness in America.

Q: The tradition on Parliament Hill was, for many decades, to erect realistic bronze statues of political figures. How can we respect that old aesthetic but move with the times?

The way we express our memorials is different today than it was in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There’s now a much wider repertoire of possibilities. If you look, for example, at the Royal Canadian Navy Monument, it’s very symbolic and, by the way, proving to be very popular.

Q: That’s the gold ball perched on a marble base that was unveiled beside the Ottawa River near Parliament Hill in 2012.

And it’s been very well-received. But you can see it’s a very symbolic expression, not the old-fashioned approach of a bronze statue. The nice thing about the process that’s been underway for many years in Ottawa, which produced some very good contemporary memorials, is that there was quite a good adjudication process and a very careful site-selection process, and a bit of an arm’s-length association between the proponents and government.

The Royal Canadian Navy monument. (David Kawai/Xinhua Press/Corbis)

Q: So what changed? What went wrong in the case of the victims of communism memorial?

Two things happened. One is that, several years ago, the responsibility for managing the conceptualization, as well as the implementation of monuments, moved away from the National Capital Commission, which is one step removed from government, and shifted over to [the Department of Canadian Heritage].

Second, in more recent times, the governments of the day have been more interested in using monuments and memorials to communicate themes. In the past, memorialization was not so much a part of the government’s communications strategy. Some of the more recent memorials have been sponsored by the government and have been communication vehicles for government.

Q: Such as?

The 1812 memorial on Parliament Hill, for example, is a good indication. That was a part of a whole communications program the government has. I’m not trying to interpret the politics of why that was the case, but it was the case.

Q: The process was less political in the past?

In the past, what tended to happen is that organizations would come to the NCC. The NCC has a very well-articulated policy on the location of monuments according to their stature, saving certain sites for the primary monuments of the country, identifying sites where monuments were appropriate. That was managed through the NCC, at arm’s length from government, working with the sponsoring organizations.

In recent years, there have always been competitions, truly independent panels, the advice of our committee, and other kinds of advice. The projects then move forward.

Q: And that didn’t happen in the case of the victims of communism memorial?

As I understand it, the monument is basically sponsored by the government and has been implemented through a department of the government. The NCC is put in the position of an approval authority, but it’s much more constrained than if it was managing the project from the beginning.

Plans for the victims of communism memorial. (Handout)

Q: The NCC can’t say yes or no to the site, for instance, or reject the design. The site is dictated and the design can only be fine-tuned.

That’s right. Had it emerged through the advocacy of organizations across the country, the NCC would have laid out a suite of different kinds of sites appropriate to the budget, scale and nature of the monument.

It would have chosen one of those, then the project would have been managed with independent adjudication and moved forward. I don’t think we would have seen the location that was selected by government for the site on the table. There are many, many other sites where this monument would have fit quite nicely in the capital.

Q: Is that what your committee suggested?

From the very beginning, we did say to the NCC that this wasn’t the best location. This location, according to all the approved plans that have been long on the books, should be held for an office of government. There is limited space north of Wellington Street for government buildings.

Q: There are almost no good places left to add buildings near Parliament.

There are so few sites that it’s important to hold the sites that are there for future buildings, given that government goes on for hundreds of years. So our advice was that this site wasn’t appropriate for this kind of monument.

Our second piece of advice was that, if this location were pursued, we would lay out some design requirements that would leave room for a building, or would push the monument away from the primary image of the capital—which should be about the government of our country: the legislative branch, the judicial branch.

Q: What should happen in order to stop what you consider a big planning mistake from happening again?

I believe in the arrangement that was previously in place. These proposals emerged out of the spontaneous organization of people in the country, sometimes with government support, sometimes not. Then, the NCC could manage these proposals within a context of policy. They could go through a competitive design process and have an independent adjudication, with the NCC board being the final decision-makers through that well-articulated and transparent process.

Q: You’ve been the chair of the NCC advisory committee for more than a decade. Most Canadians have no idea your group exists. Can you explain what you do?

We are only an advisory board. We don’t make decisions. We give independent advice that the NCC board and the government can take or leave. Put me aside; our committee is composed of very distinguished architects, landscape architects, designers, urban planners and economists. We represent a perspective across the whole country. We bring a belief that the capital is a national asset, and we worry for the nation.

Q: You’re suggesting the government should listen to your committee on something like this.

They will get our advice. Regardless of the politics of the day, every member of our advisory committee gives independent advice, whether they listen to it or not.

Q: Will you keep doing it if your advice is rejected?

I don’t think anyone in our positions, if we were constantly not being listened to, would participate. Having said that, if you look back over the past decade, I would say our advice is followed 95 per cent of the time. We’re humble enough to know our advice won’t always be followed.

Last month, employees of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) were asked to fill out and sign a confidential conflict-of-interest document, part of a new code-of-conduct protocol that includes a mandatory training session and meeting with a manager. In itself, this is not unusual. Employers routinely require staff to disclose potential conflicts—financial or personal—that could compromise their ability to do their jobs.

What makes the 17-page “Employee Confidentiality Report” obtained by Maclean’s unique is that it classifies the civil servants’ behaviours—both on and off the job—by “categories of risk”: Red signals “high risk” of conflict of interest, yellow “moderate risk” and green “low or no risk.” The colour-coded model mirrors the terrorism threat-advisory scale created by U.S. Homeland Security after 9/11—except that the threat levels here apply to civil servants, many of them scientists, working for a federal department that oversees Canada’s earth sciences, minerals and metals, forests and energy, and identifies its vision as: “Improving the quality of life of Canadians by creating a sustainable resource advantage.”

The “assessment tool,” sent to 2,000 NRCan employees, with the remaining 1,700 to receive it in the next few months, asks 12 questions about their “position and duties” and 10 about “outside activities,” including volunteer and advocacy work. Any potential conflicts, employees are told, will be resolved by one of five “mitigation measures,” which range from documenting the conflict of interest to asking the employee to resign.

Employees with high public profiles and access to classified materials and strategic decision-making are deemed “high risk.” So are those who have “friends and/or family who are employees in my sector.” (“Friends,” the memo helpfully explains, “refers to persons with whom you socialize outside of work or work-related events.”) In other words, things that in many workplaces would be considered an asset—networking skills, a presence in the industry—appear to be red flags if you’re an NRCan scientist or staffer. Also unusual is an emphasis on employees’ off-duty activities and their social relationships. Having “friends and/or family” within your department is a “moderate risk.” An NRCan spokesperson explained to Maclean’s that by focusing on “friendships in one’s sector, we are highlighting enhanced awareness and understanding of potential situations that could call into question an employee’s impartiality, for example, staffing or for work assignments.”

Oddly, the most common conflict-of-interest concern in most organizations—investments or financial interests dovetailing with operations—comes almost dead last, the ninth of 10 questions.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), the union that represents professionals in the Canadian public service, including research scientists at NRCan, has seen conflict-of-interest forms implemented everywhere, but never in such detail, says Laurie Wichers-Schreur, manager of classification and research at PIPSC. “You generally sign off on a general conflict-of-interest statement; if it appeared you were involved in anything that could be construed as conflict of interest, they submitted you to a second form similar to this one,” she says. “In years gone by, it was more focused on sideline businesses; now it’s more focused on political activity.” The initiative is part of a new “performance management system” tracking civil-service performance introduced this spring by the Treasury Board, Wichers-Schreur says, one that will see all departments updating their conflict-of-interest agreements.

The survey has been greeted with disbelief, concern, and some anger within an already demoralized workforce, says a civil servant within NRCan. “It starts off pretty reasonably, but then gets into personal items, such as having friends at the office.”

Employment-law specialists express surprise at that personal focus: “It’s more reaching, in terms of questions about friends and family and advocacy than corporate codes of conduct,” says Toronto lawyer Kumail Karimjee, who speculates that inquiries about family and friends could violate human rights codes. Political neutrality is a tenet within civil service—particularly in the top tier, says Karimjee, who used to work for the Ontario government and encountered a similar requirement there. “I had these sorts of political restrictions. I found it a bit over the top, but this strikes me as worse. It’s ‘Give us all this information and we’ll decide.’ ” The focus appears to be on the employee, not on what constitutes conflict and how to navigate it, he says, unlike corporate conflict codes, which spell out conflict-of-interest situations. “This isn’t that,” he says. “It’s saying, ‘You’re on this spectrum.’ ”

For instance, being “an adjunct professor,” or teaching “at a postgraduate level” is “high risk,” whereas teaching at a “postsecondary (but not postgraduate) level” constitutes a “moderate risk.” While the government says this has to do with balancing other commitments, it may come across as a bias against academics. The NRCan spokesperson explains that, “in cases involving adjunct professorships, it’s important for the employee and the manager to agree on details, including time spent in class and preparing course material.”

Wichers-Schreur points out that having a high public profile, including professorships, is directly linked to scientists’ and researchers’ salary and professional reputations: “Things like being an adjunct professor, or having worldwide recognition, or speaking at conferences, plays into how much money they earn and move through the pay grid,” she says. “The higher their level of recognition and productivity, the more value they are—or were, in the old days.” She’s not sure what’s behind the new classifications: “It’s not clear whether the government is trying to control costs through this measure by maintaining a lower level of compensation for research sciences, or whether this is another way of controlling their access to the broader scientific population or the public,” she says.

Mike Sargent, president of the Natural Resources Union, which represents 1,100 NRCan workers, also expresses frustration with the NRCan survey. “We have no problem with a process for self-evaluation regarding potential conflicts of interest,” he says. “We have a problem with how the questionnaire was attached to ethics with the possibility of disciplinary action.” Questions about friendships can be a pitfall, he says: “If you have a friendship with someone who deals with NRCan in some capacity you might not be aware of, how do you report that?” The union has asked NRCan for a list of companies and partners it deals with, so employees will be able to see where conflict could occur, says Sargent: “They’re unable to produce that list.”

Such personal inquiries contribute to a climate of uncertainty within a public service shaken by widespread budget and staffing cuts, as well as restrictions on travel to conferences and speaking to media over the last four years, says Sargent, who also points to a new security-screening regime that includes fingerprinting and credit checks.

Within NRCan, there’s concern over questions about staffers’ outside affiliations, or, as the survey put it, “advocacy or lobbying in areas related to the mandate of” the department. “If I contribute to Greenpeace, an organization branded as eco-terrorists by some members of the Harper government, would that be taken as advocacy against the mandate of the department?” one staffer asks. (An NRC spokeman says no: “Donations to registered charities would not be considered advocacy.”) Still, the staffer fears the “high risk” labelling will lead to self-censorship: “Asking a civil servant to declare any advocacy activities could have a chilling effect on what they do in their private lives, in case it affects their livelihood.” Wichers-Schreur points to other possible consequences: “If a researcher foresees that taking on a role of adjunct professor with a particular university that might not be to the liking of people evaluating this risk, they might not do it, which, in turn, limits their career opportunities.”

Within NCRCan, many see the Employee Confidentiality Report as a waste of time and taxpayers’ money. The mandatory information session is 2½ hours long; filling out the form takes another half-hour, which adds up to more than 11,100 department man hours. In addition, there’s the time managers spend evaluating each form and reporting suspected problems, as well as on interviews with the employees. The erosion of morale could cost even more, says one staffer.

Some wonder if the whole exercise is redundant. “It’s amazing they are evaluating trustworthiness using an email survey, when all of these people have signed an oath to the Queen,” says a former NRCan staffer. “And most research scientists have an enhanced level of security clearance.” He questions the pre-election timing. NRCan is a front line of climate-change policy, he notes: “I’m wondering if this survey is coming up now, because people within the department have the potential to say things that could embarrass the government.” Ironically, now, they don’t have to say anything; the questions raised by the survey speak for themselves.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/at-one-federal-department-office-friends-are-risky-business/feed/14NCC pitches a new plan for victims of communism memorialhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/soothing-talk-about-a-controversial-monument/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/soothing-talk-about-a-controversial-monument/#commentsThu, 25 Jun 2015 20:21:36 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=733289The NCC is revising the design of a controversial monument. John Geddes explains why it's unlikely to sway those who find the idea unthinkable

The revised plans to the concept of the Memorial to the Victims of Communism.

Outside of read-aloud storytime in the children’s book section of a good library, it’s rare to hear such a soothing tone of voice as Steve Willis‘s, the National Capital Commission’s executive director of capital planning, used today to present to the NCC’s board a revised design for the government’s proposed victims-of-communism memorial.

His presentation to the NCC’s open board meeting had been anxiously awaited by the memorial’s many opponents, who object to its massive scale and imposing design and, especially, to plunking the monument down on the site chosen for it by the Conservatives—a rare patch of vacant space near Parliament Hill, right next to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Willis took pains today to describe how the revised design would cover only 37 per cent of that prime piece of real estate, much reduced from the 60 per cent the original plan would have taken up. And he stressed that the scaled-down version wouldn’t be the aggressive concrete mass illustrated, to the alarm of so many, in previous design drawings.

Instead, Wills said, the more muted monument would “nest within the existing landscape burm”—a grassy rise on the site. Compared to the assertive original, the adapted monument will be “nestled much farther back” from Wellington Street. It will be “less dominant.” At night, Willis added, instead of the red lighting envisioned by its designers, they had agreed to substitute “much more gentle white lighting,” of a sort that “doesn’t detract from the architecture in the balance of the area.” And there will be lots of “grasses and ornamental shrubberies,” not to mention “native Canadian maples,” to break up the view.

I dare anyone to object in any way to the maples. As for the rest, it seems more sellable, at least, than the polarizing design it replaces. Still, opposition will not melt away. Timing is crucial. With the fall election coming up, there seems to be no way the Conservatives can complete enough work on the monument to make it all that difficult, should they lose the election, for a new government to halt the project.

In fact, the NCC board appeared pointedly interested in the notion of moving it. After all, the site originally designated for the thing was across Wellington Street and a bit west of the Supreme Court of Canada. Other possible locations have been proposed—none so prominent as the current site, but still within the ceremonial heart of the capital.

The initial plans for the monument.

It was worth listening when NCC board member Norman Hotson spoke up near the end of the discussion of the new plan. As an architect and a respected urban design expert, and a founding member of the Vancouver’s DIALOG design studio, Hotson is the board member whose voice you’d most want to hear regarding this controversy. “I’m very pleased to see the reduction in scale that has been so well delivered today,” he said. “I just wish it would go a step further.”

Well, perhaps more than just a step. He rejected the notion of the monument—apparently, no matter how gently nestled into the landscape, regardless of how softly lit by night, being built where the government wants to put it. “There must be a building built on this site someday,” Hotson said. “It is just such a part of the composition of Parliament Hill.”

As for the decision to put the monument there in the first place, Hotson said: “It feels a little bit like it’s been plopped into a convenient location where there happened to be a bunch of open land, and that’s not the way to plan something that’s both very important as a monument, but also in a way that preserves a site that should have a building on it someday.”

Further work to revise the monument’s design is under way. The NCC board is likely to convene a special meeting to consider it later this summer. But, no matter how reassuringly the revisions are described, nothing is likely to change the minds of the many designers and architects, such as Hotson, who find the proposal unworkable.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/soothing-talk-about-a-controversial-monument/feed/5What it feels like to play Glenn Gould’s pianohttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/what-it-feels-like-to-play-glenn-goulds-piano/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/what-it-feels-like-to-play-glenn-goulds-piano/#respondTue, 23 Jun 2015 14:06:00 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738503Ever wondered what it’s like to play Glenn Gould’s prized piano? Known as CD 318, the Steinway is permanently on display at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre as part of an exhibit paying tribute to the legendary Canadian pianist. Watch Calgary's musical prodigy Jan Lisiecki honour the late pianist.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/what-it-feels-like-to-play-glenn-goulds-piano/feed/0What it feels like to be the flag master on Parliament Hillhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-it-feels-like-to-be-the-flag-master-on-parliament-hill/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-it-feels-like-to-be-the-flag-master-on-parliament-hill/#respondThu, 18 Jun 2015 17:05:48 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738527Have you ever considered what goes into looking after the flags that fly on Parliament Hill? Meet the man who has the special duty of changing the Canadian flag atop the Peace Tower each business day.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-it-feels-like-to-be-the-flag-master-on-parliament-hill/feed/0What it feels like to be a lockmaster on the Rideau Canalhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-it-feels-like-to-be-a-lockmaster-on-the-rideau-canal/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-it-feels-like-to-be-a-lockmaster-on-the-rideau-canal/#respondMon, 15 Jun 2015 20:29:37 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738359See what it takes to be a lockmaster on the Rideau Canal, a picturesque chain of lakes, rivers and canal cuts joining Kingston and Ottawa. Helping to move a riverboat through the waterway is all in a day’s work for this lockmaster.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-it-feels-like-to-be-a-lockmaster-on-the-rideau-canal/feed/0What it feels like to be at the Canadian War Museum on Remembrance Dayhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-it-feels-like-to-be-at-the-canadian-war-museum-on-remembrance-day/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-it-feels-like-to-be-at-the-canadian-war-museum-on-remembrance-day/#respondMon, 15 Jun 2015 20:29:30 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738467On November 11, at exactly 11:00 a.m., sunlight shines through a single window in Memorial Hall at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, illuminating the headstone from the tomb of Canada’s Unknown Solider. This is what it’s like to experience this sombre event in our nation’s capital.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-it-feels-like-to-be-at-the-canadian-war-museum-on-remembrance-day/feed/0What it feels like to be in the vaults at the National Gallery of Canadahttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/what-it-feels-like-to-be-in-the-vaults-at-the-national-gallery-of-canada/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/what-it-feels-like-to-be-in-the-vaults-at-the-national-gallery-of-canada/#respondMon, 15 Jun 2015 20:29:27 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738555Tour the vaults at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa for a behind-the-scenes look at where some of our country’s most prized artwork is meticulously stored.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/what-it-feels-like-to-be-in-the-vaults-at-the-national-gallery-of-canada/feed/0What it feels like to whitewater raft on the Ottawa Riverhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/life/what-it-feels-like-to-whitewater-raft-on-the-ottawa-river/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/what-it-feels-like-to-whitewater-raft-on-the-ottawa-river/#respondFri, 12 Jun 2015 13:11:11 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738267Experience the rush of navigating an exhilarating whitewater rafting excursion on the world-famous Ottawa River rapids.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/what-it-feels-like-to-whitewater-raft-on-the-ottawa-river/feed/0What it feels like to canoe Ottawa’s Rideau Canalhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/what-it-feels-like-to-canoe-ottawas-rideau-canal/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/what-it-feels-like-to-canoe-ottawas-rideau-canal/#respondFri, 12 Jun 2015 13:11:01 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=757361It’s one of the most surreal places to canoe in Canada. Padding along the Rideau Canal, the 202-km waterway connecting the city of Ottawa with Kingston, Ont., is a must-do daytrip.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/what-it-feels-like-to-canoe-ottawas-rideau-canal/feed/0What it feels like to be a graffiti artisthttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/what-it-feels-like-to-be-a-graffiti-artist/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/what-it-feels-like-to-be-a-graffiti-artist/#respondFri, 12 Jun 2015 13:10:58 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738237If you’ve ever been tempted to pick up a spray can, watch this. Ottawa graffiti artist Eric Desarmia shows off his craft as he spray paints a gorgeous gypsy head, the newest addition to a graffiti-covered wall.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/what-it-feels-like-to-be-a-graffiti-artist/feed/0What it feels like to watch the sun set over the tulips on Parliament Hillhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/life/what-it-feels-like-to-watch-the-sun-set-over-the-tulips-on-parliament-hill/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/what-it-feels-like-to-watch-the-sun-set-over-the-tulips-on-parliament-hill/#respondWed, 10 Jun 2015 20:23:23 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738511Canada’s capital is at its prettiest during tulip season, when Ottawa’s flowerbeds burst into bloom. Enjoy this postcard-worthy scene as the sun sets on the gorgeous tulips planted on Parliament Hill.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/what-it-feels-like-to-watch-the-sun-set-over-the-tulips-on-parliament-hill/feed/0What it feels like to skate the full length of Ottawa’s Rideau Canalhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/what-it-feels-like-to-skate-the-full-length-of-ottawas-rideau-canal/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/what-it-feels-like-to-skate-the-full-length-of-ottawas-rideau-canal/#respondSun, 07 Jun 2015 18:37:01 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738499Ready, set, go! This is the picturesque view you’ll see when you skate the length of Ottawa’s Rideau Canal, the world’s largest skating rink, open 24 hours a day during the winter months.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/what-it-feels-like-to-skate-the-full-length-of-ottawas-rideau-canal/feed/0The 2015 federal election: As seen on TVhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-2015-election-as-seen-on-tv/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-2015-election-as-seen-on-tv/#respondMon, 25 May 2015 21:06:50 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=722379Aaron Wherry on the last 48 hours in political ads and a new stage in the audio-visual battle ahead of October's actual vote

Election campaigns don’t so much begin or end anymore, but merely continue, periodically intensifying around the date of an actual vote. Thus, with less than five months between now and a new federal election, those advertising slots on television and radio not already claimed by the federal government to promote Canada’s Economic Action Plan™ will likely soon be taken for expressly political appeals, the major parties with millions to spend and no pre-writ spending limits to restrict them.

The Conservatives followed this morning with two ads: “The Interview” and “Proven Leadership.” The latter recalls an ad the Conservatives ran in 2011, the Prime Minister once again working away in his office to finish the paperwork that will protect us from chaos and tumult. (CBC reports that the specific assembly line pictured is actually slated to close later this year.)

The former builds on a notion the Conservatives have been pushing since Justin Trudeau emerged as a rival: First the Liberal leader was “just in over his head,” then he was “just not up to the job,” and now he’s “just not ready.” (The job-interview conceit closely matches an ad the Manitoba NDP ran in 2011.) The Conservatives notably soft-pedal their dismissal of Trudeau in this case. “I’m not saying no forever, but not now,” says one woman reviewing Trudeau’s metaphorical resumé.

The Liberals released an ad last month to mock the government’s use of advertising during the NHL playoffs and a new online video that recounts the government’s actions on a single day this month and, on Monday afternoon, they released a new television clip. Focused on the Liberal party’s new tax proposals, the video—entitled “True Story”—shows Trudeau visiting with an adorable family who would receive more money under his plan.

These ads are useful, at least, for clarifying the ideas that the parties would like to focus on: leadership, the economy, security, the middle class, change, fairness. But how much any of these ads will affect the result on Oct. 19 remains to be seen.

The Conservative attacks on Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff are often credited with spoiling any hope either had of becoming prime minister, but earlier attacks on Trudeau were thought to have had little impact on his relative popularity. Indeed, the precise utility of political ads is the subject of some debate. In analyzing the available research on ads in 2011, Nate Silver noted that the effect of any one ad might be limited and that content could matter less than quantity. “Campaign ads matter more when a candidate can outspend the opponent. This simple fact sometimes gets lost, because people fixate on the content of ads. But the volume of ads may matter more,” he wrote. “Consider the 2000 [U.S.] presidential election. In the final two weeks of the campaign, residents in battleground states were twice as likely to see a Bush ad as a Gore ad. This cost Gore four points among uncommitted voters.”

Parties touting these ads obviously generate news reports (like this!) that carry their messages. But the real impact is likely in getting these ads aired widely and repeatedly. That would leave, presumably, the richer Conservatives in the best position. But the Liberals, New Democrats and Greens are also raising more money than they have since new fundraising rules were introduced in 2004.

All of which should culminate in television, radio and Internet streams that are lousy with sloganeering through the fall.

(Parties don’t generally reveal the details of their ad buys, so our own Paul Wells created #sawanad to track sightings across the country, with such reports often providing a rough sense of scale and even revealing campaigns that haven’t been promoted by the parties.)

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-2015-election-as-seen-on-tv/feed/0NDP MPs champion an end to the ‘tampon tax’http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ndp-mps-champion-an-end-to-the-tampon-tax/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ndp-mps-champion-an-end-to-the-tampon-tax/#commentsThu, 07 May 2015 20:14:20 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=716795'Quite frankly, women are tired of being ignored': House of Commons expected to vote on the 'tampon tax' next week

The statue of Nelly McClung, one of the Famous Five, is seen on Parliament Hill in this photo from 2011. (The Canadian Press)

OTTAWA—A private member’s motion calling for an end to the “tampon tax” will be debated in the House of Commons on Friday, with a vote expected next week, it was announced by NDP MPs and protesters from Canadian Menstruators, who gathered in front of the Famous Five monument on Parliament Hill demanding an end to taxes on sanitary products.

“I think it is very appropriate that we are here at the statue of the Famous Five,” said Irene Mathyssen, the New Democrat MP for London—Fanshawe, who put forward Bill C-282, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act (feminine hygiene products), in 2013. “It’s a reminder that women have experienced inequality in every sphere in this country but they have fought back. This is a very important bill. Only women pay taxes on feminine hygiene products and it is very, very clear that, when the GST was introduced, nobody gave any thought to the fact that this was going to impact women.”

A group of women from Canadian Menstruators, dressed in red shirts, shoes, cowboy boots and headbands and carrying “no tax on tampons” protest signs, gathered at Parliament Hill on Thursday, empowered by the Famous Five. Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby were Alberta women who championed women’s rights and welfare and who campaigned to have the Supreme Court consider the question of “persons” so women could be appointed to the Senate.

The group has collected more than 72,000 signatures as part of an online petition, which NDP MPs delivered to Parliament Hill. The “no tax on tampons” campaign on Change.org has been building in Canada; in fact, before Bill C-282, there had been a previous bill by former NDP Judy Wasylycia-Leis that did not make it to a vote, said Mathyssen. Around the world, there have been petitions in Australia and Britain, and in the U.K., protesters have made inroads—the tampon tax has fallen to five per cent from 17.5 per cent and was debated in this week’s election.

“I think that we struck a chord. Quite frankly, women are tired of being ignored. Women are tired of being dismissed,” said Mathyssen.

Jill Piebiak, 28, who founded Canadian Menstruators, said it is time to end the archaic tax. “In this country we don’t pay GST on many essential items, including basic groceries and medical supplies. This means that there’s no sales taxes charged on cocktail cherries, wedding cakes, incontinence products or Viagra. Canadian households pay millions of dollars in sales tax on tampons, pads, menstrual cups and panty liners ever year. Menstruators buy these products every month for about 40 years. It’s a non-optional tax that is only borne by half of the population. And, though it may seem like small change, it is a tax that places an unfair burden on women [and] trans people.”

Piebiak, who works at a non-profit environmental organization in Toronto, launched her campaign in January. “Our goal was to get 50,000 online signatures and we now have over 72,000. We just wanted to bring this discriminatory tax to the public eye. A lot of people didn’t realize that it was there and people who realized were frustrated. You can’t choose not to use these products. There is no other product that is discriminatory in this way. It is a gender tax rate.”

Her group estimates taxes on sanitary products raises an estimated $36 million for the federal government each year. Mathyssen called it an insignificant amount in a $200-billion budget.

The Conservatives and Liberals have not said if they will support the bill. If it does not pass, Mathyssen said the NDP will continue to champion the issue into the fall election.

Mylène Freeman, the NDP’s status of women critic and MP for Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, said feminine hygiene products “are not a luxury for women and girls.” She urged Conservatives to “do the right thing and remove the tax.”

She believes the tax is also an extra hardship for low-income women.

The only man at the Parliament Hill event was Jack Harris, NDP MP for St. John’s East, who showed up to support his colleagues. “I think it’s a recognition of the facts of life and things are different for women—and there should be consideration given to that.”

Beyond the tax on tampons campaign, some women in the United States have taken things a step further. Free the Tampons, a campaign begun by Nancy Kramer, calls for free sanitary products in restrooms. She outlined her case at a TEDxColumbus talk. “Who decided toilet paper was free, and tampons weren’t? Who decided paper towels, soap, seat covers are free and tampons aren’t?”